


Like an Unsung Chorus

by flashindie



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crimes & Criminals, F/M, Friendship, JUST, Post 1x10, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 04:56:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 56,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14513016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashindie/pseuds/flashindie
Summary: Right now, Beth pulls the trigger, and Rio’s smile doesn’t so much as slip. His empty grin widening out into something real, something animal. Beth cocks his gun clumsily, and aims again, and it takes her three tries to realise that the chamber’s empty.*A post-season one finale monster baby.





	1. Chapter 1

He asks her if she ever loved him, and she thinks - - 

Yeah. 

For real, _yeah_. There was a whole damn time, a heady slice of her life, when Dean was goofy jokes and closed-lipped kisses at the movie theatre. When he was first dates at Joe’s Pie Shop and a letterman jacket around her shoulders and a hand over hers as she cried giving birth. When he was surprise gifts and surprise back rubs and _making love_ instead of _fucking_ and nights at prom and fairs and concerts and home. 

A time he _was_ home. 

So she says – “We have four kids, Dean. Ask me that again.” 

“Did you ever love me?”

*

But that’s later.

Right now, Beth pulls the trigger, and Rio’s smile doesn’t so much as slip. His empty grin widening out into something real, something animal. Beth cocks his gun clumsily, and aims again, and it takes her three tries to realise that the chamber’s empty. 

She can feel herself getting jittery, the hot bubble of urgency rising in her chest to grip her like a vice, and her hands are trembling when she fumbles with the gun a fourth time, only now Rio doesn’t sit around to watch. He’s out of the chair and in front of her before she can blink, grabbing the gun from her hands and tossing it aside with a heavy, heady, clang. 

It’s only then that he starts to clap, his hands low, at his middle, and Beth is fumbling backwards, thinking of what’s behind her – the lamp? Too unwieldy. The books? Not heavy enough to do damage. She needs another bottle, to do what she did to Boomer, a frypan, something heavy and fat-bottomed. 

“Maybe there’s a king in you, after all,” Rio says, and Beth blinks up at him. She knows she’s crying – the tears settling like a glaze across her cheeks, but it does nothing for Rio. Doesn’t turn him or sway him like it might have any other man in her life. 

“Please,” she breathes. “We’re not worth it, we’re - -” 

He just laughs, shaking his head.

“Try again.” 

“We have children.” 

“That ain’t worked on me the last ten times, sweetheart.” 

And - - wait. Beth pauses, catches her breath. She looks up at him. 

“Yes it has.” 

There’s quiet then. Vaguely, Beth’s aware of Dean, of his nervous breathing, of Buddy’s oblivious pants, tail slapping against the deck outside, of the hum of the bug catcher there too, loud even in the depths of the evening. Rio just arches an eyebrow. 

“It has worked on you. It’s why you let me live in the first place. What did you call me the other night? A charity case? And maybe I am. One with little kids, and a life, and a family, and needs, and _fuck you_ , you know? I’m a lot of things, and I don’t think you understand a single one.”

It’s enough for Rio to roll his eyes, to hold his hand up, and Beth loses her voice. He turns back to look at Dean, still slumped, beaten, at the table and Rio gestures out towards the front door. 

“Get out.” 

“What?” Dean flusters, and Beth’s heart spikes. 

“Get out.” 

“I’m not leaving her - - Beth, I’m not leaving without you.” 

And the thought is a sweet one, but she thinks they probably all know the sentiment has no legs. She looks back at Rio, who only arches an eyebrow back at her, the white hot fire in him is still there, simmering, but his mask is back on, that infuriating glance of smug amusement. Beth shuffles her weight between her feet, finally looking back at Dean and, still trembling, nods. 

“I can handle myself. Go to your mom’s. Stay with the kids.” 

The look Dean gives her then reminds her there’s a man in there who loves her – beneath all the shit – the lies and the affair and the gaslighting which, for twenty years, made her feel _not enough_. A part that knows that in spite of it all, the four kids they have together means they’ll never be completely unbound, but right now the only thing that matters is getting him out. 

“Dean,” she says, and she hopes her tone conveys that. “Please.” 

It takes Dean an embarrassing amount of time to peel himself out of her dining room chair, to collect his shirt back around himself and fumble towards the door. Still, she’s so focused on Rio that the only reason she knows Dean looks back at them is for the way Rio smirks, and waves him a patronising goodbye. 

The door clicks shut, and Beth’s heart mostly stops. She’s in four inch heels, and Rio still seems alarmingly tall before her, his gaze steady, and focused, his face scraped. Something in her is set alight by the intimacy of their closeness, but she swallows the flame so far down it can only catch at her toes. 

They just stand there, staring at each other for minutes, before Rio reaches forwards and undoes the top button of her shirt, tugging out the gold pin she’d settled there. She shakes, and Rio laughs, making neat work of the second button, and then the third, pulling out the collar of her shirt, until her pale clavicle is exposed, but that’s as far as he goes before his hands drop back to his sides. 

“You think you dress like me, build a house like me, talk game like me, you a boss? How many times I gotta tell you? You ain’t a boss, Elizabeth, and you ain’t me.” 

Beth opens her mouth to speak, but Rio doesn’t give her the chance. 

“There’s not enough,” he continues. “To put me away. You know that, right? You proved someone was washing cash there, but I got a good lawyer, and ain’t nothin’ in there points to me. Your boy at the FBI was overzealous. He fucked up. All it’ll take will be a couple of boys to serve time for me, and I can pay for that, but that’s it. You played your hand too early.” 

Fumbling for breadth, for any ground at all, Beth squares her stance.

“They arrested you though, didn’t they? 

Rio just laughs again. 

“Yeah, they arrested me.”

She can almost see it – the cuffs on his wrists. Can see at least the shadow of them – the cut into his skin, like they’d done it hard enough to hurt, and she tries to ignore that deep pang of guilt, deep in her gut. It’s easier to when Rio slides in a little closer, enough that he can wrap a hand around the back of her neck, a thumb to her chin, forcing her gaze up to meet him. 

“You, me, we got a contract now.”

Beth blinks. She tries to fumble back, but Rio’s grip is too tight. She pushes against his chest, but he’s steadier thing than that, and the tension in her arms doesn’t faze him. 

“You work full time now, and I mean full time. No more odd jobs, no more weeks off, none of that. Full time, you and your girls, so I’d think about retiring from the PTA and the recycling committee.” 

Beth blinks up at him again, her hands still on his chest. Rio reaches his free hand out to wrap one around hers, clasping at her fingers. 

“I thought you and me were done?” she says, voice thick, and he just stares at her.

“Me too.” 

Somewhere outside a car drives passed, lighting up the loungeroom. The couple next door are watching something loud, brash, funny, and are laughing true to form, an owl outside hoots. Beth, for the millionth time tonight, tries to find her breath. 

“What’ll we be doing?” she asks after a beat, and Rio smirks, releasing her hands, her chin, her neck. He takes a step back. 

“You’ll find out soon enough. But hey, you got what you wanted, huh? Pop the champagne with the ladies. Celebrate. I’ll be in touch. Sooner rather than later.” 

Beth breathes, watches him grab his jacket off the floor, his phone, his gun. Watches him look at her again, smirking, body taut as a bow. 

“What if we say no?” 

He laughs as he ducks out the back door, something, somehow, both sinister and lyrical.

*

“What do you think the work will be?”

It’s Ruby who asks it, leaning forwards on Annie’s couch, and Beth just shrugs, still wrapped up in Annie’s bathrobe, her hair wet and her heart raw. 

“Probably giving post-job handies to Demon and Mr. Cisco,” Annie supplies from the floor, taking a big drink from her glass of scotch. It’s enough to make Beth cringe, drop her head to the couch. She doesn’t think he would – but then – the way he’d unbuttoned her shirt…the heat rushes down, and she crosses her legs, looking back out at the two of them. 

“No. I don’t think so. The women at the warehouse, what were they doing? Sorting the cash? It’s not like we don’t have experience in that. Maybe he’ll just put us there. Or it’ll be more laundering or something…maybe nursing his beat up pals again.”

Neither Annie nor Ruby look convinced, and Beth doesn’t exactly feel it either. She’s got no idea what he wants from them. 

Beth’s eyes dart to Ruby, and she takes a breath. 

“Stan knows?” she asks. 

She’d gotten a text some time during the Rio-debacle saying as much, and Ruby only nods. Annie reaches out to grab her hand, but Ruby deflects.

“I married a smart man,” she says with a shrug. “He figured it out on his own. He’s at home with Harry while Sarah’s in hospital. He thinks I’m staying over at yours.” 

She looks at Beth then, and Beth sighs, leaning into the arm of the couch. 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault. We all made choices. Sarah has a good kidney. She’s _better_. That’s what I need to think about right now. Stan and I…” Ruby takes a shaky breath, reaches for her drink. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.” 

Beth looks over at her, and Ruby looks right back, and there’s tears in both their eyes, and really, truly, in this whole mess, this will be the thing she regrets most. Driving a wedge between Ruby and Stan, who really are two of the best ones. Beth lets her eyes slip shut, and Annie tops up their drinks, and then Beth says, “Dean lied about having cancer,” and her words sink like a stone in the room. 

“Sorry, I think I heard you wrong,” Annie says, staring straight at her, and Beth looks away. 

“I told you, he was in a car accident today. He was fine. Doctor gave him painkillers, which’ll probably help with what Rio did to his face now, and …I asked if they’d mess with his radiation.” 

Annie takes a sharp intake of breath, and Beth looks over at Ruby, who meets her look, a cocktail of empathy and rage and non-surprise. 

“Did you know?” Beth asks suddenly, brow furrowed, but Ruby just shakes her head. 

“ _No_ , Beth,” she says vehemently. “If I even _suspected_ , I would’ve told you, but he doesn’t have the best track record in terms of, y’know, stone cold lying.” 

That at least is enough to make Beth laugh, some rigid, empty thing. 

“Well, sure,” Beth replies, gesturing vaguely. She drinks her scotch like a shot as Annie starts a tirade about what a _fucking dick_ Dean is and Beth lets her eyes slip shut, until Ruby all but pries them open again with a dart sharp question. 

“What are you going to do then?” 

“I don’t know.”

It’s enough to stopper both Annie and Ruby, who look at her and then each other. Beth gets off the sofa to pour another drink and pretends not to see the obviously in-depth, non-verbal conversation the pair are having with their eyebrows and their rapidly moving mouths. Finally, Annie cracks. 

“Dump. His. Ass. Beth.” 

And lo, were it that easy. 

“He knows about us, he knows what we’ve been doing. Plus we’ve managed to be _fired_ and _re-hired_ by a _murderer_ in the space of three days in case you forgot. I think dealing with Dean is pretty low down on my priority list right now.” 

“Right,” Annie says. “Just like leaving him in the first place was.” 

Beth blinks, looks at her sister, who’s now standing, sullen as a teenager, against her living room wall.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Oh, come on, Beth. You’ve been wanting to ejector seat out of that relationship since before Emma was born. You were just settled. And then he _cheated_ on you, _in case you forgot_ , and you still let him come home.”

Beth grits her teeth.

“I thought he had cancer, Annie.”

Annie just scoffs, finishing off her drink, and Beth feels a white hot cord of rage pull up through her chest. 

“You don’t get to do this,” she hisses. “You don’t get to judge. I’m sorry I had my kids after I got married, and after high school, and you know, I’m sorry I made that marriage work for twenty years instead of, what? Five minutes? Ten?” 

Annie’s face clouds over, quick as anything.

“The only reason your marriage has ‘worked’” and the bitch – she actually air quotes it, “Is because until you decided to be a _crime lord_ , you turned a blind eye, and let Deans-y walk all over you. Half the time I was surprised there wasn’t a boot print on your face. Hell, even as Bad-ass-Betty, you still let him do whatever the fuck he wants.” 

“I don’t,” Beth says, and Annie barks on a laugh, looking over at Ruby, who just throws her hands up. 

“Really?” Beth asks, pulling Annie’s bathrobe tighter to her chest., and Ruby groans, pushing her face down until her forehead knocks against her scotch glass. 

“Come on, Beth, what do you want us to say? In the space of half an hour, you tell us we’re newly indebted to gangfriend again, _and_ that your piece of shit husband has somehow managed to out piece-of-shit himself.” 

Annie throws her hands up, dramatically, into the air. 

“Thank you!” 

Beth stares down at her drink, feeling too hot and too cold and too flushed and too, oddly, desperate. A part of her just wants to up and leave, wants to run, but then Ruby starts talking again. 

“It wasn’t sudden,” Ruby says. “That’s all I’m saying. Dean didn’t become a jackass after one night. It was a slow crawl to shit town, you know? And you put up with it, and I get it, you guys had a life together, and you were a family, but you can’t be mad at us for wanting you to get away from a man who’s treated you like garbage for fifteen years.” 

Beth looks away, and Ruby just sighs, grabbing her handbag off the counter. 

“I’m going home. I want to talk to Stan. I guess we’ll figure out this shit with gangfriend next time.” 

Beth just nods, rotating the glass in her hand, and Ruby sighs again, louder this time. 

“Love you,” Ruby says, and it’s a reflex now for Beth, but also always true. 

“Love you,” she replies.

*

The first time she’d kicked him out, before he’d thought up his cancer lie, when it had just been the affair, and just the money, Emma had slept in her bed. Her littlest girl, wiry and sweet, with her mothy stuffed rabbit and her pants kicked off to the bottom of the mattress. It had, oddly enough, pulled up forgotten memories of her own mother, who would never, ever let Beth or Annie sleep with her and their father, not even as little girls.

Then again, their mother was not really the sort. She didn’t coddle, or cuddle, or comfort. Their mother would start the day with whiskey in her coffee and smoke through the closest window, and still manage to be the perfect little homemaker for their daddy. She was set tables and pot roasts and impossible cleanliness and a model wife. As a kid, Annie would fake looking for their mother’s robot switch, and their humourless mother, who never seemed to know what to do with two daughters, would fail to play along. 

So Beth and Annie had become their own family, and Beth, almost ten years older than Annie, had become something of a mother around the same time she’d gotten her first period. The two things coinciding like her body had recognised the change in her too, and Beth had been the mother of the family ever since, and then again, when she’d dropped out of college to come home and take care of their mom when she got sick. 

And it was only supposed to be a little while – their mom was supposed to get better, and Beth was supposed to go back, but their mom hadn’t gotten better, and Annie, six months before graduation, had gotten knocked up, and then their mom had _died_ , and Dean had been there, and so kind, and then Beth was pregnant too. 

And the thing is, with enough time, Beth could’ve forgiven the cheating. Hell, she was already starting to. And maybe with more time, she could’ve forgiven the cancer lie too. She knows Dean well enough to know that when he’s pushed into a corner, he’ll put his foot in his mouth. 

The thing she can’t forgive is him thinking that she’s stupid. 

“Please, Beth, I need you,” Dean had said.

*

“You think I need you?” that’s what Rio had said, looking back at her at the depot after the truck, lip curled into a snarl. The memory of that is etched into her mind, written on it like a decree. It had left her speechless then, and it does now, catching words and thoughts in her throat like a fly trap.

“You think I need you?” 

No, she guesses he probably doesn’t. 

She’s not sure why she thought it, blinking awake, nor, for that matter, what woke her up. She’s alone in bed, the kids still with Dean’s mom, and she’s three blankets deep in her mattress, dressed only in her pyjamas – a satin two-piecer given to her by Dean for an anniversary years ago. It’s frayed at the edges now, just off-white enough to make her look, as Annie put it, like a haunted Victorian doll. 

Pushing the heels of her palms against her eyes, Beth rolls over, only to be met by a familiar face. She bolts upright. 

“Nah,” Rio says. “By all means, sleep in.” 

She pulls the blankets to her chest without a clue as to why, the fabric like static there, and she’s suddenly very aware of the fact that she is both make up-less and bra-less, that her hair is a mess, her body still docile and unwieldy with sleep. For his part, leaning back against the wall, cleaner than yesterday, but still scratched up, Rio mostly just looks amused. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks, body inching back in the bed.

“I told you, didn’t I? You and your lady friends are full time now. We got shit to do.” 

She reaches sideways for her clock – it’s just past 5 in the morning, and leans back against the headboard, scrubbing at her face.

“Really? Now?” 

But Rio’s off the wall, waving his gun around – loaded, she’s sure, now – and vague. 

“Get dressed, put your face on, whatever you ladies do, and then meet me downstairs. You got ten minutes before I come back and get you, yeah?” 

Beth looks at him, wants to ask, _or what_ , but from the look on his face it’s pretty clear he’s not playing today, and Beth doesn’t fancy being dragged out in her underwear with only half a face done up for, well, god knows how long. Rio goes downstairs and Beth changes quickly into jeans and a mustard sweater and flat brown boots, and makes quick work of putting on a basic face and messing her hair up so at least it looks well-fucked as opposed to just slept-in, and then it’s right on the ten minutes, and, true to his word, Rio’s there again, his expression dour as he looks at her. 

“I’m coming,” she hisses, and promptly follows him out to his car. To her surprise, there’s no one else. Just her and him, in the yawning stretch of morning. He opens his passenger side door for her, gesturing her in with a tilt of his head. 

“Well?” 

And Beth slides right in.


	2. Chapter 2

The first few minutes of the car ride are silent, with Rio scarcely sparing her a second look. It wouldn’t bother Beth all that much if it weren’t for the fact that she is at least 20% hungover and between the clean light of the morning and the rev of Rio’s completely ridiculous car, she mostly just wants to launch herself into space. Instead she looks out the window, tries to map out the route Rio’s started driving in, and she recognises it at first, but then distinctly, decidedly, does not. Her brow furrows. 

“You’re going the wrong way,” she says.

“Oh, am I?” 

It’s not the way to the warehouse, or the park, or the coffee shop, or anywhere Beth would think for him to take her, and, biting her lip, heart in her throat, it’s not anywhere near Annie or Ruby’s either. 

“You said _me and my girls_ , didn’t you? Aren’t you picking them up next?” 

Rio just laughs, adjusting a bit in his seat. 

“Nah, a couple of my boys are bringing them in.” 

The dread, panic, desperation builds so quickly, so suddenly, Beth loses her breath. She twists in her seat, fumbling with herself, with his arm, reaching, grabbing. If they were here, she could take care of them. She could protect them, from Rio, from everyone, from - - 

“They can’t hurt them, Rio, they - -”

“They won’t,” he cuts her off, his voice firm, hands never leaving the steering wheel. “Unless they do something stupid, but lookin’ at the three of you, I’m pretty sure I drew that straw.”

She’s not quite sure what to do with that statement. Her belly is still twisting, and she reaches down beneath herself to the back pocket of her jeans, yanking out her phone. She’s barely got a hold of it before Rio is plucking it out of her hands, dropping it into the breast pocket of his shirt. 

They briefly make eye contact, before Rio looks back at the road, giving nothing away, and Beth looks out the window. Tries to ground herself, find herself, as they drive further out from the city. She knows she should be worried for her own safety (what is it Annie’s always saying about vats of acid and hunks of bone?) and she is a bit, but she’s also quietly annoyed. At Rio, at Dean, still, at the former showing up unannounced and uninvited, _again_ ; at the latter, for not even having tried to call her last night, and probably for literally every decision he’s made the last few weeks. She slumps down in the seat, staring at Rio out of the corner of her eye. Her hands still shaking ( _Annie, Ruby, Annie, Ruby_ ), she clears her throat.

“You drew straws for us?” 

That at least makes him laugh, a proper one this time, without the undercurrent of menace so ingrained in her head. 

“You know we didn’t. Shockingly, most of my boys like your sister and your friend.” 

Beth blinks at that. Thing is, it _is_ a shock. The words sink in and she pulls a face.

“Not me though?” 

Rio doesn’t respond to that, and Beth glowers, looking away. She’s not sure why the thought of them liking Annie and Ruby, and not her, bugs her so much. It’s so stupid, so petty, so fucking _highschool_ , she shakes her head, changing the chain of thought. 

“So we’re meeting them there? At your new mystery location?” 

“Not today. You and me are on other business.” 

Beth blinks over at him again.

“What?” 

And he does look at her then, eyebrows high in false confusion, lips parted. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, baby, you think you get to sit and gossip and plot sortin’ through my money? You ladies don’t work together anymore.” 

The words are as close to a slap as Beth’s felt. 

“Excuse me?” Her voice is hoarse, even to her own ears, and Rio shrugs, looking back at the road. 

“Well, I mean you all work for me, but you ain’t no package deal no more.”

The car continues to cruise along, just above the speed limit, and Beth’s hands turn into closed fists at her thighs. She lets her eyes slip shut, tries to catch her breath, to feel her way through the moment, the panic, the dread, but the thing is, she suddenly knows exactly what Rio’s doing. 

“Divide and conquer,” she mumbles, and Rio smirks over at her. 

“You’re catchin’ on. I told you last night, it’s medieval.” 

Her frown only deepens, and she has to try and hold down the thread of white hot panic in her. The one that says that, for maybe the first time, truly, she feels this is spiralling out of her control. She catches her breath. 

“What are you going to make them do?” 

“That ain’t your business. I can’t discuss other people’s terms of employment,” he laughs a little at his own joke, and Beth resists the urge to hit him. “Anyway, I’m sure they’ll tell you over hump day drinks, yeah?” 

And Beth is suddenly, righteously furious, spinning around in her seat to better face him, hands at her seatbelt, giving herself a wider berth. She knows Rio well enough now to see him tense, see him prepare for what he surely knows is coming, only they’re both interrupted by the hum of Wham! Singing ‘Wake Me Up, Before You Go-Go’, her ring tone for Dean, a relic of a joke, a hundred years ago. 

Beth feels herself blush, hot and pink, weirdly humiliated in the second. Rio, to his credit, mostly just looks surprised. He keeps one hand on the wheel and dips the other into his breast pocket, his spidery fingers pulling out her phone and discovering what Beth herself had already known. Dean. Calling her. 

Rio rejects the call, opens his mouth, only the song starts up again, Dean’s name flashing bright across the screen. He moves to turn the phone off. 

“Don’t do that,” Beth breathes, quickly, suddenly, and Rio looks over at her, eyebrow raised. “The kids,” at his look, she quickly continues. “I’m not saying it to manipulate you, I swear. You don’t have to pick up for Dean or even Annie or Ruby. I just…if one of them is sick at school, or something happens…I’m still their mom.” 

Rio’s jaw does that thing where it rocks back, then forth, like he’s chewing on his own thoughts, and Beth watches, still oddly embarrassed about the whole thing. Finally Rio nods, dropping the phone into the cup holder between them, within easy distance for her to grab, but she doesn’t, and she thinks maybe he appreciates that.

*

It’s close to an hour before they pull up in what looks like an empty paddock – a long stretch of green beneath a cool winter sun. The wind picks up, and Beth suddenly regrets not bringing a coat, wrapping her arms around herself and following Rio out of the car.

“Where are we?” she asks, and Rio doesn’t so much as look at her. He just walks purposefully down the field, nimbly skipping a low-slung fence and heading out beyond her line of vision. She picks up her step to keep up, making awkward work over the fence, and trying to stay close. She near bolts behind him when she spots a small group of people, mostly big, thuggish, in the distance, having to resist the urge to clutch at his arm. 

They’re barely in hearing distance when one – tall, heavy beard, thick build – probably the size of four Beth’s, calls out, “The prodigal son!” 

Rio doesn’t even acknowledge it, just swaggers forwards, giving Beth enough time to clock them. There’s only four others – three men and a woman, all dressed in dark clothes, brown, black, navy. The big guy who’d yelled, another big one, this one with no eyelashes and a tattoo of a beady-eyed skull where his hair should be, and another, smaller guy, bony, light on his feet, with big, Dumbo ears, and an ugly smear of a frown. The woman is different – tall, svelte, ten years younger than Beth and about ten times as striking. Her long black hair is piled up on top of her head in a messy bun, and she has a chest of tattoos, obvious below her dark, low-slung coat. She clocks Beth quickly, arching an eyebrow at Rio who ignores her.

“Almost didn’t think you’d show,” the first guy says, grinning. He leans in enough to pull Rio into a manly, one-armed hug. Rio accepts it gracefully, even if he doesn’t return it. 

“The feds rough you up?” Skull Tattoo asks, clocking the graze on his cheek, and Rio just shrugs. 

It’s quiet enough for a beat, two, that Beth vaguely wonders if this is how she dies. A piece of collateral damage in some age-old feud. The scrawny guy sneers, and Beth can’t see Rio’s face, but she can clock the expression, even just by the set of his shoulders, that familiar, dead eyed one, where he wants you to think he couldn’t give less of a fuck. 

“You really gonna play it that way, huh?” the first guy says with a laugh, and Rio buries his hands in his pocket, tilts his head, the line of his hips. 

“You the one who wanted to see me. Said you got something I might be interested in.”

“You said you were closed for business.”

“Business changed.” 

The first guy grins, opens his mouth to speak, only he’s cut off by the woman. 

“Who’s your friend?” 

“She’s here to take the minutes,” Rio says, then, “Why the fuck do you care who she is?” 

It’s enough to light a fire under her, one Beth may or may not recognise, and the woman spreads her arms wide, not sparing Beth a second glance.

“Maybe because you got _busted_ yesterday, Rio, and I ain’t here to go down with whatever dumbass decision you’ve made that’s gotten you into trouble, especially if that dumbass decision is pussy.” 

Beth’s suddenly really regretful of what she’s wearing – I mean – a _yellow sweater_ and flat boots? What was she thinking? She looks like a kindergarten teacher, and judging by the looks she’s getting from everyone else, the thought isn’t hers alone.

Rio suddenly stands very, very close to the other woman, and, slow as anything, says, again, “What you got for me?” 

That’s all it takes for the woman to bear her teeth and turn on the spot, striding sullenly out towards a spot in the distance where three cars are parked, and the others all turn to follow. Beth means to start too, only Rio is turning around, looking at her. Without warning, he tosses Beth his keys.

“Go wait in the car.” 

Beth pauses, jerks her head back. Her gaze finds the others, who can’t not have heard. 

“What?” 

“Go wait in the car.”

“ _Rio_ ,” she hisses, and that’s enough at least to make the others turn back. Rio just buries his hands back into the pockets of his hoodie, his gaze steady, unblinking, and finally Beth flounders, grabs the keys, gives Rio the filthiest look she can manage, and storms back to his car alone.

*

They take a while.

Beth fumes, then dozes off her hangover, then goes through all the things in Rio’s car – of which there’s not much interesting – a notebook obviously written in code, a small cigarette case full of weed, a half-empty box of condoms (which may or may not make her blush to the roots of her hair), a book by an author she doesn’t recognise, written in Spanish, a receipt for shawarma. Basically everything except her phone, which he’d taken with him, the asshole, and so before she even knows it, she’s dozing again, and this time dreaming of her mother. 

Not the mother she usually remembers – the End-of-Days-one, hollowed out by cancer and spite, or even the make-believe one of their childhood, who’d at least handmade the lemonade for playdates and crimped Beth’s hair for junior prom. It was the odd, in-between one, when Beth was graduating highschool with top honors, offered a full ride to University of Michigan, dating highschool quarterback, Dean Boland, and the way she’d looked at her, that one night, wasted, and said, “You will hate all of this.” 

The door slams shut, and Beth startles awake, sitting bolt upright and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. It’s almost midday (Jesus, has it been that long?) but Rio looks somehow lighter, pleased, like he’d gotten something that he wanted. 

“How was your day at work, baby?” Beth sings, sweet, mostly, and the look Rio gives her says he can taste the malice. He ignores her, grabbing the keys from her hands and starting up the car. They’re back on the road before Beth feels brave enough to keep talking. 

“What was that about anyway? Last I heard, when the heat was on, you shut down.” 

Rio just shrugs. 

“Depends on the heat.” 

Beth opens her mouth to reply, only to hear the familiar chords of ‘Wake Me Up,’ again, and Rio groans, audibly. Beth looks at him, at the tense chords of his throat and the uneasy slump to his shoulders, and wonders, vaguely, if it had rung during his meeting, and, fuck it, she thinks. 

“He’s going to keep calling until I answer,” she says, and Rio gives her a look she can’t place. She holds it, squaring her shoulders as best she can, and after a minute, he tosses it to her. With a wobbly breath, she answers it. 

“Beth? Bethy?” Dean’s voice is stark down the line, desperate, and Beth can’t ignore the deep thread of guilt in her gut. 

“Dean,” she replies. “I’m here. I’m okay.” 

She twists her body away from Rio’s, until her shoulder is pressed against the car door, and she can pretend she’s anywhere else – at home with Annie, or in Ruby’s car. Anywhere but here. 

“I’m at the house,” he says. “Where are you? The minivan’s still here, and Buddy, but…” 

And the first think she thinks is that she could tell him the truth. She could be honest, and say Rio’s got his hooks in her, and that she wouldn’t mind keeping it that way, at least for now. She could tell him that they’re over, and he can stop worrying about her, that she’s ready for whatever it is this looks like, because the alternative is unbearable to her, but she doesn’t. 

“I’m out with the girls,” Beth says finally, feeling Rio’s eyes on her. Stupid, Beth thinks, giving him leverage again, and for what? To protect Dean’s feelings? (But also, God, what Rio did to his face) But then he’d given her leverage too by bringing her out here. “I just needed a breather after last night. Ruby picked me up. We got brunch, now we’re shopping, then we’re going to go to a bar. I’ll be home tonight. Promise. You’ll bring the kids home?”

Dean is quiet over the line, almost like he knows that Beth is lying, but he plays it off, his voice taking on that lighter, joker lilt. It’s old habits, and they’re easier to slip into than Beth cares to admit. 

“Yeah, I can bring the kids home. I’ll bring take-out. Can’t have fun, drunk mom worrying about dinner, huh?” 

“You’re so thoughtful,” she says, picking at the seam of her sweater. “What did I do to deserve you?” 

She can almost feel Dean beaming down the line, swollen face and all, and her gut twists uncomfortably, like she could vomit, and she’s not sure if it’s the hangover or if it’s this – the mask of Perfect Bethy. Somewhere, vaguely, Annie and Ruby’s words from the night before echo in her head, and she hangs up before she can think more of it, dropping her phone back into the cupholder and staring out the window as the expanse of paddocks slowly becomes spattering’s of houses, roadside diners, truck stops. 

When Rio talks, it’s not to say what she expects. 

“What’d he do?” 

Beth blinks, looks sideways at Rio, who’s still looking out at the road. 

“What?” 

It takes Rio a moment to answer, like he’s thinking of the best way to say something, and Beth’s gaze doesn’t leave him. Takes in the slope of his jaw and the distinguished, angular set of his nose. His unfairly handsome face. 

“I didn’t pick him up, you know. I didn’t track him down. He was just there, when I got to your place yesterday. He had flowers and shit, candles, already blubberin’. I don’t think I was who he expected.”

Rio laughs at the memory, something deep and unsympathetic, and Beth frowns, looking out the window. 

“Why do you care?” 

He shrugs.

“Just makin’ conversation.” 

And that is enough at least to light the match again. Beth laughs, almost hysterically, twisting in her seat to meet him better.

“You want to make conversation? You want to tell me what it is you expect me to do? Is following you around my job now? Making your gangfriends laugh? Shadowing you like a dog?”

She can feel herself starting to heat up again, the frustration of it all, of everything in her big, dumb, messy life, bubbling over. 

“You want to make me your bitch, right? You think _divide and conquer_ , you think keeping me here, beside you, will stop me doing things you don’t like, right? Well, it won’t. You can’t order me around. I told you once and I will tell you again, I am not a worm on a hook for –”

“You know you spend a lot of time trying to tell me what I can and can’t do?” Rio says, sneering at her. “You can’t, sweetheart, you ain’t got that sway.”

Beth scowls, foot rapping against the floor of his car, and she’s so annoyed, she can barely contain herself. She’s crawling out of her skin with frustration, the urge to vomit, or scream, or yell, building, to just expel herself somehow. Rio’s grip is tight on the wheel, and she remembers those hands, at the back of her neck. 

“Why don’t you just get this over with?” she hisses. “Why don’t you just kill me?” 

His answer is quick, like he’d been expecting the question. 

“If I wanted you dead, you would be.” 

“Well, _excuse me_ , if that’s not the most comforting thought.” 

Rio does that thing where he clenches his jaw, right at the back, in a move she’s starting to recognise means she’s pissing him off. At least right now though, she’s finding it difficult to care. Rio suddenly swerves, pulling the car over roadside. He turns it off, and Beth continues. 

“What’s to stop you _wanting me dead_ tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Next year? You might get off on having my life in your hands, but I certainly do not. We worked hard for you, and you used us.”

Rio belts out an ugly laugh, something furious and manic, like the night before, and Beth can only squash the panic beneath a heavy hand of anger. 

“What do you think this is? Bed, Bath and Beyond? You want to file a complaint with HR? You were out, mama. _You’re_ the one who wanted back in.” 

“We needed the money.” 

“Bull. That might’ve been why you robbed Fine ‘n Frugal, but it sure as shit ain’t why you left me your pearls.” 

And how does she respond to that? She opens her mouth, but no words come out, and suddenly she’s flustered, uncertain, and Rio’s just watching her, his eyes open, considering, firm, and was he always this close? She should take lean back, she _should_ , she…she does. 

Rio lets her, looks away, scoffs, and Beth tries to catch her breath.

“You’re wrong,” she says finally. “You don’t even know me.” 

And that gets his attention again. He looks back at her, forehead furrowed in disbelief. 

“You keep sayin’ that like you believe it,” he says. “I’ll be the first to say I know your life about as well as you know mine. We ain’t got much history, but we got some now, and I know _you_. Fuck, Elizabeth.” 

His gaze burns hot through her, and Beth trembles against her seat, feels hot all over, earnest, almost honest. She rubs at her arm, looks away, and then back at him, and this time, holds his gaze. 

“You want to tell me about those guys?” she asks, changing the subject, and Rio looks at her, brow still furrowed. She changes tacts. 

“That an ex-girlfriend?” 

That at least makes him soften, laugh. 

“Why you wanna know?” 

She just shrugs, and Rio laughs, louder this time, as he starts the car back up. 

“She’s an ex-something, that’s for sure,” then, after a beat and another laugh. “She did not like you.” 

Beth feels herself flush, a weird coil of outrage in her gut, sparking fast and spiralling quick as a forest fire. 

“She didn’t even talk to me!” 

“Yeah,” Rio hums, indicating back onto the road. “V’s like that.” 

V. That’s almost a name, Beth figures, and then shakes her head. She does not care about gorgeous ex-girlfriend’s with attitude. Beth is not going there. She is _not_. 

“Maybe I don’t like her.” 

Or maybe she is. Who knows. She cringes as soon as she says it, but Rio just purses his lips, nods. 

“Fair. You don’t like my ex, she don’t like you. I don’t like yours, he don’t like me. We’re a regular Verona.” 

He laughs again, and Beth rolls her eyes, gives him a look, which only makes him laugh harder. He calms down quickly though, usually does, his gaze back out towards the road, and it’s been such a long, fuck-off few days, and well, Beth thinks. 

Fuck it. 

“He cheated on me, months ago, lied to me, lost all our savings in bad investments and,” she breathes, sharp, shaking her head. What had Annie called it? “Bedazzled vagina floss. For his child bride. Racked up bad credit in his name and in mine. I kicked him out, he told me he had cancer, so I let him back in. I found out he lied about it around the same time you found out I’d turned you in, so I guess we both had a shitty day. That’s what he did. To answer your question.” 

Rio doesn’t reply to that, but he doesn’t laugh either, like maybe she’d expected. The rest of the ride mostly passes in silence, and Beth ends up dozing again, and Rio lets her. She knows she should be awake, should be asking questions about what that meeting was about, should be thinking about Annie and Ruby, about the kids, about _tomorrow_ , but she’s too tired now, drained, and the next time she blinks awake, it’s to Rio’s hand on her arm, rocking her gently. 

“Up and out, sweetheart. You’re home in time for school run.” 

She swears a little, rubbing blearily at her eyes, and letting Rio lean across her to open up the passenger door. She stumbles out, grabbing her phone on the way, and only pauses on her way back to the house because Rio doesn’t let go of the door. 

“To answer your question – you asked if my boys liked you?” he drawls, looking passed her to her house. Then, suddenly, his gaze flicks back to her. When he speaks his voice is low and heavy. “They know they ain’t allowed to feel one way or the other about you.” 

Beth looks over at him, suddenly, oddly, breathless. 

“Why not?” 

He just snorts, rolls his eyes.

“’See you tomorrow, sweetheart,” he says, closing the door and driving off into the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha, this might end up being a lot more than five chapters, because I accidentally discovered a plot. 
> 
> Anyway, next chapter will be a lot more Beth, Annie, Ruby, a lot more Dean, and a lot less Rio (sorry, kids!) I promise, they'll get there.


	3. Chapter 3

She’s barely home an hour before Annie stumbles through the back door, relief colouring her cheeks the moment she sees Beth at the kitchen island, pre-making school lunches for the next day. 

“Oh, thank god,” Annie says, dropping a hand to her chest, catching her breath. She peels herself off the backdoor and beelines straight for Beth’s bar, pouring three glasses of bourbon. “When you didn’t show at the warehouse, I wasn’t sure what we were going to find. Like, I was half expecting _Walking Dead_ , you know? Don’t Open, Dead Inside written in blood on your door. Your blood, obviously, maybe Dean’s too, after last night. I don’t know. I have been _very_ stressed.” 

Beth pauses in cutting up carrot sticks, unable to quite stopper the relief in her own belly too at seeing her sister’s face. 

“Yeah, well, join the club,” Beth says, tossing the carrots into sandwich bags. “Are you okay?”

It takes Annie a second to reply – she does a solid lap of the kitchen with her drink until finally bubbling over. 

“You weren’t there!” she all but yelps. She throws back her bourbon and then pours another. “As established, we are in unchartered waters here, Quint, and we don’t exactly have a bigger boat.” 

Beth almost wants to mention the mixed references, but is stoppered by the sound of another car pulling up outside. Before she can even look, she hears Ruby’s easy voice, talking to Stan on the phone. Beth lets loose another sigh of relief. 

“What were you guys doing anyway? Did you get picked up?” 

“Uh, yeah, I got picked up,” Annie says, eyebrows halfway to her hairline, body stuttered. At that moment, Ruby comes in through the back door, and Annie quickly passes her a drink before handing the third onto Beth. Ruby makes neat work of shotting it down, dropping the empty glass to the counter and leaning over to squeeze Beth’s elbow (reassurance that she’s there? Or just plain reassurance? Beth doesn’t care. She grabs Ruby’s hand briefly in reply).

“So this guy just shows up at my apartment, right?” Annie starts, topping up Ruby’s glass. “At like, four-thirty in the friggin’ morning. I barely had time to pull on jeans before he’s dragging me out to his van and carting me back to that warehouse. The one Rio took us to when he told us to pick up the truck? They were all like, ominous and shit, arms crossed, eyelid tattoos, I don’t know. They pulled me in and the set-up was just like the post-Canada warehouse, and I figure, oh, they’re going to make an example of me and like, dump my body in a tub of acid and make counterfeit cash out of my skin, but next thing I know, I’m standing around boxing up chemicals like I’m at Fine & Frugal.” 

Beth blinks, looking over at Annie. She’s a mess of jittery energy, but the bourbon (or maybe, Beth thinks guiltily, seeing _her_ ) already seems to be having an effect at softening out her edges. There are too many ways to play it, and so Beth goes with the way she thinks Annie might like best.

“So, no handies?” 

It makes Annie choke on a laugh, drop into the bar stool at the kitchen counter and flatten her body over the surface. 

“No, thank God. Although there was one guy there, who, I don’t know. If he played his cards right.” 

Ruby groans beside her, shoving at Annie’s shoulder before sitting down herself. She takes a drink from her fresh glass and leans back, eyes briefly slipping shut. 

“And you?” Beth says, looking over at her, and Ruby peels her eyes back open and shrugs. 

“I got a text heads up and everything. I guess they know who and what Stan is. I met them down the block after he went to work and I’d dropped the kids at school. Spent the day sorting cash. They’re packing it all up. Everything in the warehouse.” 

That, at least, is enough to make Beth blink in surprise. 

“Packing it up?” 

“Yeah. I guess we’re headed for another shut down.” 

Beth bites the inside of her cheek. She thinks of the field, of that meeting, which ebbed with intent and history, of that look Rio had, back in the car, pleased, like he’d won something. 

“No,” she says. “I think he might be flipping his game.” 

That’s enough to make Ruby and Annie both pause, stare at her, and for Annie to follow it up with a long, lone howl of _whhhhyyy_ which they both choose to ignore. 

“To what?” Ruby asks. “Drugs?” 

The thing is, Beth doesn’t know. She’s not sure what Rio’s got planned, but something in her gut tells her it’s not that. She shakes her head. 

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t know.” 

“Where were you all day anyway?” Ruby asks, taking a sip of her drink, and Beth feels herself, inexplicably, blush, oddly embarrassed by the strangeness of her day. She clears her throat, takes a drink herself, before reaching again for the carrots. 

“Rio picked me up this morning. We drove a few hours out of town, and then he went and met with some people, and then he brought me home. I don’t know.”

The silence that follows is oddly unsettling, and Beth blinks up enough to catch Annie and Ruby staring at her, their faces a mix of carefully neutral (Ruby’s) and utterly knowing (Annie’s). Beth drops the carrots in response, holds her hands up. 

“What?” 

“Oh, Rio picked you up?” Annie asks, looking pointedly over at Ruby, who looks right back. “Rio picked her up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

A minute passes, maybe two, where Ruby finishes her second drink and Annie stares until, finally, sighing – loud and annoyed. 

“Fine, I’ll bite,” she says, waving her drink in Beth’s face from across the counter. “There’s a reason we never meet at mine or Ruby’s, and a reason you do ninety percent of the talking when we meet with him. Gangfriend has wanted to stick it in you since he was waving guns in our faces and saying your _backsplash was dope_.” 

She lowers her voice when she quotes him, a pale imitation, and Beth looks over at Ruby, who’s eyes are closed at the phrasing, eyebrows raised. 

“And you, missy,” Annie adds, waving a hand back at Beth. “Are basically a night dress away from singing _hopelessly devoted to you_ to his reflection in Emma’s kiddie pool.” 

Beth blinks, and Ruby says, “Really?” at her, and then Annie’s just shrugging. 

“Sadie and I watched _Grease_ the other night. I have it on the brain.” 

She focuses back on Beth, eyebrow raised.

“Your evolution to post-make-over Sandra Dee is coming, and it is coming hard and fast, paint-on-leather-pants and all.” 

Beth shakes her head, heart aflutter as she leans back against the kitchen counter. 

“Leather looks terrible on me.” 

Annie just rolls her eyes, reaching for another drink. 

“It doesn’t, but that’s beside the point. The point is, you need to approach with caution, my friend, or you’re going to have your legs over his shoulders and eight inches of his _other_ gun in you quicker than you can say _but I’m a soccer mom_.” 

“ _Annie!_ ” 

Beth’s so red she’s pretty sure she could replace the stop signs outside of school, and at least it’s enough to make Annie check herself before she continues. 

“Not that I don’t get it. He is _beyond_ hot, with all of his like, _looks_ and his arms and his mouth and his long fingers, which you _know_ he knows what to do with.” 

“Yeah, and when he does that thing with his voice,” Ruby says, and Beth gives her a betrayed look as Annie nods, humming. 

“Mmm, when it goes all low and it’s somehow like, gravelly, but also smoother than seam-free panties.” 

“Seam-free panties?” 

“You know what I mean. Those things are smooth as hell.”

That at least is enough to make Beth scoff, collect herself. She takes a drink, arches an eyebrow over at Annie. 

“Are you sure it’s not you who wants…” Beth flounders then, ruining the effect, and blushes. “His _gun_.” 

“You know I like ‘em nerdy,” Annie says with a shrug. “Do you remember Greg in highschool? If a guy’s not wearing an ugly sweater over a collared shirt, I don’t even want to hear about it.”

Beth looks sideways at Ruby. 

“What’s your excuse then?” 

Ruby puts her hands up. 

“I ain’t blind,” she says. “I’m also not stupid, like this would be.” 

Somewhere outside a car alarm goes off, a kid yells, and it’s enough of a distraction to give Beth the time to collect her breath. She isn’t - - she _wouldn’t_ \- - just at the same time…

“I thought you wanted me to get over Dean.”

Annie immediately snaps back. 

“Yes! But that does not mean getting _under_ a _gangbanger_ , Beth. I meant someone boring, like one of Kenny’s teachers or Hot Dad from carpool.” 

“Hot Dad’s a good choice,” Ruby agrees, as Beth shakes her head, cheeks still red. “And I have it on good authority his divorce will be finalised before the Spring Fling dance.” 

Beth throws the last of the carrot sticks into Emma’s lunch bag and moves all the kids’ school lunches into the fridge. 

“You guys are ridiculous,” she says. “There’s nothing to be worried about. We just…you know, we’ve talked a little more than you guys have. There’s nothing _going on_ or whatever, it’s just…” 

She turns back from the fridge to be met with such sceptical looks from both Annie and Ruby, she throws her hands up, conceding. 

“Okay, there’s a, you know, _charge_ or whatever you want to call it, but that’s all it is. It’s nothing either of us want or will act on. Trust me. I mean, me and _Rio_?”

She feels herself blush, and laughs harder to cover it, which doesn’t seem to do anything to smooth the issue over with Annie or Ruby. 

“Besides,” Beth says instead. “I met his ex today, and I’m pretty sure I am not his type.” 

“For starters, men don’t have types,” Annie says. “Men have penises and a deep, deep need to put those penises places they usually don’t belong. And secondly, way to bury the lead! An ex!” 

Beth nods, glad, briefly, to have the subject changed. She tells them about the meeting, then about V. 

“She was like, distressingly good looking,” Beth says. “Like Catherine Zeta Jones in _Entrapment_ meets Eva Mendes in _Once Upon a Time in Mexico_.” 

“Hot,” Ruby agrees, and Beth nods adamantly. 

“Super hot.”

Annie just rolls her eyes. 

“Everyone’s hot, the point is, he took you out to like, a business meeting.”

“And then made me wait in the car.” 

Annie throws her hands up in frustration. 

“Look, I don’t pretend to know what that guy’s thinking, but that’s not nothing, Beth. Maybe he actually does want to keep us around. Like, he showed you that. Maybe he has a plan. One that involves you.” 

“Us,” Beth says. “It’ll involve _us_.” 

And she’s not sure of a lot of things, but she gets the feeling that this whole thing of separating Annie and Ruby from her is temporary. Like it’s a punishment for what they’ve ( _she’s_ ) done, and that maybe it’ll iron out. If it was more than that, a real _divide and conquer_ , surely he would be making sure this, right now, wasn’t happening? Besides, like hell she isn’t taking her girls with her.

She doesn’t have much more time to think about it before she hears the sound of another car pulling up. She quickly peers out the window to spot Dean and the kids piling out onto the lawn. 

“Shit,” she hisses, finishing her drink and shooting desperate eyes at Ruby and Annie. “Dean called today. He doesn’t know anything past when he left last night. I told him I was with you guys all day.” 

Ruby tilts her glass up in acknowledgement and Annie rolls her eyes. It’s all they get the chance to do though as the front door bursts open and the kids dash through, Dean on their heels, carrying four boxes of pizza. 

“Yikes,” Annie says, looking back at Beth. “You weren’t kidding about his face.” 

And no, Beth wasn’t. His face looks even worse than last night, swollen and stiff, one of his eyes nearly completely shut. She’s shocked he even made the drive here. All the same, Beth gives Annie a look, and Annie holds up her hands again in surrender. 

“Alright, alright, I’m out of here. Got a big night of like, sleeping and stuff before the early start tomorrow.” 

“Early start?” Dean asks, probing, and Annie nods. 

“Yeah, sure, Deansy. Picked up a double at Fine & Frugal. Feel free to stop by. I’ll let you sit and de-swell in the meat freezer.” 

He grimaces at her, and Annie just finishes her drink, getting to her feet, Ruby close on her heels. Before Ruby leaves, she leans in again, hugs Beth a quick goodbye, before leaving them alone with the kids. 

Beth stops for a minute, watches him watch her out of his one good eye, and feels her gut clench in some uncomfortable cocktail of guilt and pain and anger. She thinks she should say something, anything, only then Emma is there, latching onto her waist, pushing her forehead into the soft flesh of Beth’s belly. Beth holds her close for a second, two. 

“Go wash up for dinner,” she says after the third, and Emma and the rest of the kids bolt up the stairs towards the bathroom as Beth takes the pizzas from Dean and lays them out on the dining room table. She pulls out the seats Rio and Dean sat on just the night before, her gut clenching uncomfortably, but she shakes it off, ducking into the kitchen to grab plates. She hasn’t realised Dean’s followed her until she hears him. 

“Well?” he asks, voice heavy, probing, his hands on his hips. 

“Well, what?”

She grabs six plates out of habit, and it takes her a second, a breath, to put one back. 

“What happened last night?” 

Beth moves back into the dining room, clearing her throat as she does it. 

“Nothing, really. We talked a little more about stuff, and then he left.” 

“Just like that?” 

Beth looks up at where Dean stands not three feet away from her, hands on his hips, face brown with bruises, his lips turned down into an uncertain little frown. And no, she figures, that won’t be enough anymore. She can’t tell him everything, but he also knows too much already. 

“I’d set him up with the FBI. To try and get him put away, but there wasn’t enough,” she decides. “He just wanted me to know that, before he agreed that we weren’t worth it.”

Dean seems to mull this over, and Beth looks up at him, tries to put the defeat she’d felt then in this, and he finally seems to accept it. He knocks his hip against the table, watching her set it. 

“So all that stuff with the gun and…and _killing kings_ , that was what?” 

“A fake-out. You saw it. No bullets.” 

She sniffs a little, grabs some paper towels for the inevitable grease on the kids’ fingers, sets them up in the middle of the table, ready to go.

“So it was to embarrass you?” 

That’s enough to make her startle. She looks up at Dean, who’s standing there, petulant as a child, chin thrust forwards as he looks at her, and she feels a sudden white hot thread of anger in her belly that she has to swallow down. Of all the people to accuse anyone else of embarrassing her…and no. She can’t do that now. She takes a breath and widens her already wide eyes. 

“Yes. I think so. Who knows what goes through his head though.”

“He’s a maniac,” Dean adds, and Beth doesn’t reply to that.

It’s all it takes though for him to collapse down into one of the chairs and throw open one of the pizza boxes, and Beth arches an eyebrow, straightening her back. 

“What are you doing?” 

He blinks at her, clueless and gormless. 

“Dinner, right?” 

“Why would you think you’re staying for dinner?” 

Dean stops. 

“What do you mean?” 

She laughs in disbelief, shaking her head. That thread of anger igniting again, deep in her belly.

“Dean, you lied to me about having cancer.” 

He flounders then, arms spread wide, his shoulders pathetically slumped. 

“I tried to make it up to you. And look what your _bounce house guy_ did,” he gestures achingly to his face, his chest, and Beth’s gut clenches with guilt. 

“And I’m sorry about that,” she says. “I really am, but I need some space right now. Go stay at your mom’s.”

Dean scoffs in disbelief, a wounded fucking deer, and Beth clenches her eyes shut, feels the swell of blinked back tears there, and says. “Dean, please. Please just let me collect myself. It has not been a good few days, and I just need some time to figure it out.” 

For a minute, she doesn’t think he will. That he’ll fight her on it, like he usually does, but there must be something in her face today that has drawn a line, and finally he stands up, starts towards the front door.

Only when he gets there, he stops. 

“Do you remember prom?” Dean asks. “I matched my tie to your dress, got you that peony corsage. We danced to Sinead O’Connor and we did that fun, sexy stuff in Sally Patinski’s family pool at the after party? That was one of the best nights of my life then, and it still is. I knew then that you were the love of my life. And I know that now, still.” 

His voice is soft as he says it, and Beth lets her eyes slip shut. She thinks of all the things she could say – that those aren’t the things she remembers about prom, or they are, but not the important things, that she can’t remember the last time she thought of him as the love of her life, that that memory? It was twenty years ago. But instead she says nothing. 

“He called you darling…” Dean adds. “Even with everything, it sounded like he meant it.” 

There’s an accusation there, curling below his tongue, and Beth looks up at him, opens her mouth to say something, she doesn’t know what, but the rapid fire feet of the kids are bounding back down the stairs and she’s rushed by them, and when she looks back up, Dean is gone.

*

It takes her a half hour to put the kids to bed, their little bodies frantic with the movements of the week, and a part of her regrets it all. Can see it in their faces – the confusion of these last few months – the revolving door of home and people and things, and the undercurrent of tension that’s scaffolded their days. She wonders how much of it they pick up on – Emma, none really, she’s too little, and Kenny seems about as hopelessly oblivious as Dean, but Jane and Danny both held on a little tighter tonight when she lays them down, their little breaths short and sharp at her neck.

Still, she thinks, some things can’t always be helped. 

She wonders about going straight to bed, collapsing into the folds of her mattress. About whether Rio will be by in the morning to pick her up, and what she’ll do if it’s five again, two hours before school run. She could text him, but she’s not sure if that’s a card she wants to play now, or how, exactly, he’ll take it, or even if he’ll want something in exchange for any slight bend in his plan, as he often seems to. 

Shaking her head, she peels off the bed and into the bathroom. She thinks of a shower, but ends up running a bath, shrugging out of her sweater, her jeans, her bra and panties, and lets the steam from the tub envelope her before she steps into the water. It’s neat around her, nice, lapping over her skin like she’s something of a beach, dampening her sands. 

Beth thinks about prom. 

Or not about prom. About Beth-at-prom. About her hair, longer then, bright copper and down passed her waist, and her mermaid-tail, teal glitter dress. She thinks about _her_ – student council president, spelling bee champion four years running, yearbook editor, volleyball team, glee club, straight-A student, and the way she’d felt when Dean, quarterback and, at seventeen, certified babe, had asked her out. 

Mostly though she thinks about her body, dumb as it might sound. About the neat, easy lines of it and the tightness and the shape. She’d been a g-cup before her senior year, with a tiny waist, and an ass that wouldn’t quit, and back then she’d been so insecure. Shy, and unused to it, trying too hard to ignore the leers and catcalls of boys her age and the uncomfortable focus of men her father’s. Dean had been easy, and kind, and never touched her before she was ready for it, but the years had dulled that part of him, and so when she hadn’t been ready for it after Kenny or Jane or Danny or Emma, he hadn’t been quite so easy, and he hadn’t been quite so kind, even if he hadn’t touched her if she hadn’t let him. 

And it’s twenty years, and he’s still the only man she’s ever been with, and the thought makes her slip beneath the surface of the water, face and all, until her hair balloons around her, and her back hits the base of the tub, heavy as a stone. 

How do you navigate a man’s look again? How to you sail their intent, when you want it, and when you don’t? How do you step back into shoes you haven’t been in since you were sixteen with no parent left to protect you? How do you step into the light alone, when the only one you can hide behind is yourself?

*

She wakes up in bed, blinking the sleep from her eyes and finding her gaze suddenly, startlingly fixed on Rio’s.

“You know,” she groans, sitting up and leaning back against the headboard, running a hand back through her still-damp hair. “Sometimes I think we’re in a movie, like _50 First Dates_. Have you seen that one?” 

Rio just gives her a look, handsome in his high-buttoned, maroon shirt, and Beth rolls her eyes. 

“Like, in it, Drew Barrymore is falling in love with Adam Sandler, but she has short-term memory loss, and they have this whole life together which she never remembers, and she wakes up to him every day and has to try and figure out why the hell he’s in her room.” 

“I figured you’d know by now why I’m in your room.” 

“Only sometimes.” She stretches, feels a nip of air at her chest, and has to blink down and resist the urge to cover herself. She’s in a night-dress instead of her usual satin button-downs. One she hasn’t worn for years, something svelte and trim, a plunging neckline and a deep teal that Dean always said made her eyes look crazy blue. She shakes her head to dislodge the thought, glancing back up at Rio to clock him looking, a small grin tugging at his lips. 

“This new?” he poses it like a question, inclining his head to her, and Beth feels herself blush, from her chest to the tips of her ears. 

“No. It’s just…” she clears her throat, pushing back the sheets to climb out of bed. “How long do I have to get ready today, anyway?” 

She’d forgotten how short the night dress was, how much pale leg it exposed, and Rio clocks it faster than she’d thought possible. He pushes off from his position backed up against the wall, taking slow steps towards her. He stops right before her, his chest a hair’s breadth from her own, his breath warm against the shell of her ear. 

“We got a little time.” 

He reaches out then, and, with rough-padded fingers, pulls the shoe-string strap of her night dress off her shoulder, enough to expose the deep curve of her upper breast. 

“Mama!” 

Beth startles awake to Emma leaping bodily on the bed, the early dawn only just raising its head from outside. She clenches her satin-pyjama pantsed legs together as Emma clambers up the mattress, pressing a wet-mouthed kiss to Beth’s eyelid. 

“It’s morning!” 

“Yep,” Beth says, painting on a grin. “It’s morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sexy dreams and character arcs! A lot more Rio next chapter, I promise~ 
> 
> Also I have a fandom tumblr for the first time in ages! It is https://pynkhues.tumblr.com/. Add me if you like. :-)


	4. Chapter 4

Rio’s not there when Emma wakes her up, nor does he show when she showers, dresses, gets the kids ready for school. He doesn’t suddenly appear when she piles the kids into the minivan, drops them off, nor is he there when she gets home, and Beth has to try her very best to ignore the way her belly turns in discomfort at the thought of him not showing up at all. ( _You think I need you?_ ) 

After another hour of waiting at the dining room table, only half reading a newspaper, she shakes herself out of it. So what if he doesn’t come? She has enough to do. She kicks off her heels and gets a start on the laundry. She does a load of darks, then brights, then whites, chewing up the time between throwing dinner into a crockpot and cleaning the house (taking extra care on the floor in the dining room – a few rivets of blood, Rio’s or Dean’s or both, having been missed on her first round two days before). 

She showers again afterwards, to scrub the grit from beneath her nails, and ends up pulling on a pair of grey yoga pants and one of the comfiest shirts she owns – a big, old maternity blouse – something forest green with white and blue flowers and a saggy waist and a low-cut, wraparound top designed for breastfeeding. She’s thinking about clipping Buddy’s nails, which is well overdue, still towel-drying her hair when she steps into the kitchen and sees Rio, hovering over her crockpot, lid in his hand as he peers inside. 

“Jesus,” she hisses, startled, and Rio does that half-grin up at her, then, if she didn’t know any better, she’d swear he did a double take.

“What?” she snaps, tone defensive, even to her own ears, tugging up the sag of her shirt at the bust, but Rio just looks back down at the pot, grabs the wooden spoon, knocking aside one of the bell peppers. 

“What’s this?” 

“Dinner.” 

He gives her a _no shit_ look at that, and Beth does her best to return it, before sighing in concession. 

“Slow-cooked peppers. You stuff them with rice and zucchini, olives, fetta, a bit of basil, and cook them in pasta sauce for a few hours. Dinner, like I said.” 

“Huh,” Rio replies, looking back down at the pot, and Beth rolls her eyes.

“Put the lid down, you’re letting the heat out.” 

To her surprise, he does, taking a step back to lean against the counter behind him, hands behind his back, curled around the bench top. For a moment, that’s all he does, lean and stare, two things she’s starting to think he’s very good at. 

Beth just flusters, regretting at least half of her day. She’d felt good this morning, in a rich maroon blouse and black skinny jeans. Knee-high boots with a wide, four-inch heel. Perfect for gang meetings in fields! Now she feels her dowdiest mom self. It doesn’t help that she half falls out of the shirt (which is kind of the point, y’know, _maternity blouse_ ), and that her wet hair is starting to frizz. There’s a whine ready to go in her throat, but she swallows it down, juts out a hip instead. 

“I thought you said full time.” 

“I did.”

“Full time implies regular hours. A standard work week. I was ready to go at five, like yesterday.” Mostly, at least. “But you didn’t show, you didn’t text, so I’ve made other plans.” 

He gives her a highly amused look at that, and Beth squares her shoulders. 

“I’m not available today anymore.” 

She spins on the spot, beelines for the laundry and pulls the brights out of the dryer, replacing them with the wet whites and starting to fold the dry clothes. It’s stupid, she knows it is, but this also isn’t fair. She has to pick the kids up from school in a couple of hours, and – and, she feels the hot flush, start at her neck, tap behind her eyes. Maybe – maybe she’s embarrassed. She tugs up her shirt again, wishes, blindly, that she’d thrown on literally anything else. 

“That’s kinda too bad,” Rio’s voice hums, and Beth glances up to catch him in the doorway of the laundry, shoulder pressed into the arch, body leaning easily. He looks unfairly good, in black jeans, his black t-shirt only half tucked in, a faded hoodie that remains unzipped, low on his shoulders. It makes his neck tattoo look all the starker, the dip of his collarbone teasing just beneath. 

Beth’s blush only deepens, and she tries her best to hide her tummy, her cleavage, behind the mounds of washing. 

“Oh, I agree,” she says, making awkward work of folding one of Emma’s tutus. “It’s a shame you had to drive all the way out here to find out.” 

He laughs a little, pushing off the door jam and before she can do much more about it, he’s tugged the laundry basket out of her hands and set it aside. He steps in close, too close, and Beth feels her eyes go half-lidded and has to blink hard to cover it. 

“You’re funny,” he says. Not says, _purrs_ , in that horrible, unfair way that leaves her weak in the knees. She thinks of her dream and then – _no_ , nope, not going there. “You wanna get changed before we go out? I mean, I don’t mind the look,” he chuckles, low, as he says it, and takes the opportunity to look her up and down, slow, cripplingly slow. Then arches an eyebrow. “But I think you do.” 

And smartass, Beth thinks, snorting a little, squaring her stance. She can handle a smartass. 

“Oh, you don’t?” she asks, leaning in a little closer, until all she can smell is him – his cologne and his minty breath and that deep, musky smell that is somehow just him – somewhere, in the back of her head, she wonders what he can smell in her. “So I can show up at the warehouse like this? It’s one of my favourites. So comfy, you know? I’d think it’d be a little unprofessional for your line of work,” she shrugs a shoulder, just so, so that she can feel the fabric start to gape at her breast. “But hey, if the boss says it’s okay…” 

And the thing is, she doesn’t really know if Rio’s a jealous person, but if half of what Annie and Ruby had said last night is true about the way he looks at her, and hell, if half of her gut is right about the type of man Rio is, jealousy is something pretty squarely in his wheelhouse (what had he said – _my boys know they ain’t allowed to feel one way or the other)._

Point is, it works. He does that thing where he squares his jaw, rocks it neatly at the back and takes a step back, enough for Beth to catch her breath again. 

“Go get changed. You got a short day today. You’ll be home to pull your peppers outta the pot.” 

And good, she thinks, ignoring the flutter, deep in her gut. 

Good. 

__

*

After yesterday, she’s not exactly sure what she was expecting, but truthfully, it isn’t this.

“Are you kidding?” 

It’s enough to make Rio laugh at least, pulling up into a car park. It’s a place she’s well and truly familiar with – ZoZo Sparkle – a big craft store not two suburbs over. It’s been her go-to for poster board, scrapbooking supplies, glitter pens, tulle and fabric for costumes, whatever, since she had kids, and, on occasion, has been close to a second home for her. Something in her finding some comfort in the familiarity and layout of it, in the scope of losing herself in ink and glue and grit. 

“Do you wash cash here?” Beth asks, oddly scandalised, twisting in her seat to look at him, and Rio shakes his head. 

“Nah, they’d never take us on. Not for that, anyway.” 

It takes her a second to process it, to turn the words over, and when she does, she squints at him, lips pursed. 

“Not for that?” 

He doesn’t respond to that though, just gets out of the car, and Beth promptly follows. In the early yawn of afternoon, the store is blissfully quiet. The only other customers seeming to be housewives not so unlike the old Beth – put-together in neat, pressed jeans and forgiving sweaters, full faces of make-up, and ready fingers, grabbing whatever it is they need for their children’s projects, for PTA meets, bridal shower invites. Beth grimaces, expecting a particularly smug look from Rio, but when she looks up, he isn’t looking at her at all. 

Rio has somehow managed to glide passed all the scrolls of fabric, the sew-on clasps, the aisles and aisles of pipe cleaners and _stickers_ without comment, finally settling in the paper aisle. When she finally stops behind him, he’s eyeing off different cuts, different weights, different embossing. 

“You know about paper, yeah?” he asks, and Beth blinks in surprise. 

“You brought me here to talk about paper?” 

She at least feels ballsy enough to talk back again. She’d changed into jeans, a forest green sweater (because fuck Rio, honestly) and boots, and is right at home in ZoZo’s. Rio, however, sticks out like a sore thumb. 

If he feels it though, he doesn’t comment, just gives her another _no shit_ look, and Beth resists the urge to flip him off, choosing to respond honestly instead.

“Not a lot about yours, if that’s what you mean. I still don’t get how you make…” she looks sideways. “ _You know_ , out of wrapping paper.” 

“I ain’t asking about that.” He rolls his eyes as he says it. “I don’t need nothin’ in that department, sweetheart.” 

The pet name is enough to make her roll her eyes (and ignore the swoop in her belly), and she leans back against the store shelf, arm out in confident ease, a mirror of his earlier pose. 

“Well, what do you need then?” 

He just shrugs.

“Talk to me about craft paper.” 

Beth blinks again, looking at the range that Rio stands before. 

“It depends what you want it for,” she says after a minute. “Copy paper is your basic stuff for printing obviously, but there’s card stock or containerboard for anything thicker. If you’re wanting something thin, decorative, there’s crepe paper, washi, rice, or vellum, if you want something that looks thin, but is relatively sturdy. It’s good for invitations, if you want them to look a little fancier, but don’t want them to crush in the post.” 

It’s a conversation she’s had before, just not with Rio, and while those old chats had left her feeling firm, distinct, Rio frowns at her, like he’s disappointed, and Beth finds herself suddenly embarrassed again, unsure of what he’s asking her.

“You know if you told me what you were doing, this’d probably be a lot easier.” 

That at least is enough to get a rise out of him. He scoffs, loud, burying his hands in his pockets. 

“You ain’t exactly been much of a confidant lately, baby.”

There’s a familiar spark of anger in her belly, one that shoots and makes itself known, and Beth pushes off the shelves, opening her mouth to reply only to be cut off by a neat, deep tenor behind her. 

“Everything okay here?” the voice asks, and Beth blinks, turning around to catch a young store attendant behind them, a boy really, maybe twenty, twenty-one. He’s tall though, built in the chest, and he puffs it out when Rio sneers. 

“Of course,” Beth hums, but the shop boy doesn’t take his eyes off Rio, and Beth is finding herself sidling closer to Rio defensively. She grabs his arm, loops it over her shoulders, and tries to ignore the way he leans in, pressing his body against her side, his hand dropping to skim just kind-of against her breast. 

“Oh my god,” Beth says, rolling her eyes at the shop assistant. “You’re sweet. We just get heated, you know? One of our best friend’s is having a gender reveal party, and this guy,” she drops a hand to Rio’s chest, feels the steady warmth there, and has to fight the blush. “He just does not trust me with that information. Unfair, right? I just want to know what colour crepe paper we need to make the decorations with.” 

Beth bats her eyelashes, and the shop assistant laughs, diffused, just like that. “You could just go with yellow. That’s what my sister did. Keeps it all neutral.” 

Beth gasps deliberately, waving her free hand at the assistant and making wide eyes at Rio. “ _Yellow_. Why didn’t we think of that?” 

They exchange mild pleasantries for a minute, two, before the shop assistant leaves them alone again, and they look back at the paper, only Rio’s arm doesn’t quite leave her shoulders right away, and Beth doesn’t quite leave his side. 

He does though, soon enough, disentangling from her in time to ask:

“What do you know about lithography?” 

“Lithography?” Beth blinks, surprised. Not a lot, if she’s honest – pieces, picked up, here and there, an art class somewhere in her brief stint of college, one of the mom’s in the PTA, joking about it. “It’s a type of printing. Hundreds of years ago. Created somewhere in Europe, Germany I think. It’s a quick way to mass produce stuff.” 

And hell, figures. Rio just stares at her again, chewing on his thoughts. He looks out, passed her, down the aisle, into the wide expanse of the store foyer, and shakes his head. 

“Nah, you can do better than that,” he says, and Beth blinks, reeling back. 

“Excuse me?” 

“You’re a good liar. Tell me what lithography is. Sell it to me. Now.” 

Beth watches him watch her, in the middle of the craft store, trying to figure out if he’s joking. But Rio doesn’t really joke, she figures, especially not with stuff like this. 

“Well,” she says, blinking, gesturing out at the aisle. “You couldn’t use any of this for starters. Not if you were wanting to make anything good. You’d need better quality paper. A cotton-blend, something nice, silky, you know? Something you want to touch. You’re not going to find anything like that at ZoZo’s. You’ll need to go into town, or online, order something _good_. Sexy. Of course that’s subjective.” 

She leans a little closer, enough she can smell him again. She lets herself get a little base – lets herself inhale, licks her lips, lets them part, still a little wet. 

“I always thought I liked a gloss, but, you know, the matte finish? It’s really been growing on me.”

She steps back, touches the edges of the shelves, looks at the stacks and stacks of paper, at the amount people will pay for it, made clear in neat little price tags beneath. 

“If we’re talking lithography, it does prefer the matte. It does best on something thick, so the print can really take. We are talking metal after all, that, and ink, and oil. We’re talking one of the oldest running, and most authentic, systems of printing around.” 

She takes a breath, her knowledge on the subject mostly dried up. She tries not to flounder. “But hey,” she says, touching Rio purposefully on the elbow. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

She leans back again, oddly nervous, like she’s just been interviewed for a job she didn’t know she was in line for, and Rio just does that thing where he breathes out a sound which is somewhere between satisfaction and amusement. He buries his hands deep in his pockets, switching gears faster than Beth can catch. 

“You come here often?” 

Beth blinks, surprised. She shrugs. 

“I used to, I guess. It’s good for school project stuff, and the girls’ recitals.” 

He opens his mouth to add something, but Beth’s phone buzzes, deep in her pockets, and she reaches down to fish it out. She’s missed a few messages, not many, but enough she has to scroll. Her breath stops at the chain of Annie’s. 

_Social worker coming in the morning. Freaking, Out._

_What are the odds of me getting out of gang work for the day? Need to clean the house, need to adult._

_Pls send help or death or both._

Beth startles, looks up at Rio, who’s a few metres down, giving her space and looking very confused in front of a wall of buttons. 

“Annie can’t work tomorrow,” she says. “And neither can I.” 

Rio arches an eyebrow at her, and Beth flusters, but firms up, quick and best she can. 

“Please,” she says. “It’s important. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.”

*

“And that’s all it took?”

Beth pinks, right around her cheeks as she makes Sadie’s bed. Annie shoots her a disbelieving look over the mattress, but Beth chooses not to meet it. 

“He just nodded,” Beth says, which is mostly true. “You know what he’s like. He just…decides on something, and then it’s over.”

“I think you and I have very different definitions of something being _over_.” 

After Rio had dropped her home, Beth had yanked dinner off the heat, raced to pick the kids up and then met Annie at her apartment. It had felt like an odd, full-circle to her day, that she’d spent so much of the morning waiting on Rio and getting her house in order, then so much of the evening, when he maybe expected her to be with him, getting Annie’s house sorted too. They’d spent the bulk of the afternoon cleaning, leaving Beth’s kids with homework, pizza, and parent-locked Netflix in the living room. 

“He seemed okay, at least.”

And he did, after Beth had told him. Told him about Annie and Sadie, about the custody case. About how important this was. He’d just sort of nodded and brought her home, a strange look on his face that she was unused to. She hadn’t had much more time to think about it, and had been grateful for it until now. 

When she looks up again, Annie is staring at her, worry creasing up her forehead. 

“If he thinks there’s a debt in this, I’ll pay it.” 

Beth blinks, face rippling with surprise. 

“What?” 

Annie just drops the mattress, pulling the covers down over it a little rougher than she needs to be. 

“I just don’t want you to owe him anything.”

Beth watches her sister fluff pillows and pick Sadie’s ties, suspenders, wayward shoelaces off the floor, and Beth thinks, _no_. She finishes tucking in the sheets and strides around the bed until she stands right before Annie, taking the stuff from her arms and putting them aside. She makes her sister stop, a hand on either of her narrow shoulders. Makes her look at her. Breathe. 

“I’m the big sister, aren’t I?” Beth says. “You’ve got enough to worry about right now. You’ve got to get your mom-pants on, and show this social worker you are everything me, and Ruby, and most of all, _Sadie_ , knows you are. Let me worry about the other stuff, okay?” 

Annie just sniffs, laughs, sniffs again, and finally nods, and she lets Beth hook her chin over her head and swoop her into a hug. 

“I still think touching his penis is a bad idea,” Annie says, swiping at her face in Beth’s arms. “But just for the record, I don’t think it’s a bad enough idea for you to not tell me absolutely everything about it the second it happens.” 

“It’s not going to happen, Annie.” 

“Sure,” Annie replies, wrapping her arms around Beth’s waist. “But when it does, I need a phone call.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, we have a season 2! I am over the MOON. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit filler, but I promise it is important filler. I hope you like it.


	5. Chapter 5

Beth opens the door to be met with Dean, sprawled on their couch, flicking through Netflix. He startles at the sound of it all, turning his not-swollen-shut eye sideways to meet her, and Beth drops her purse. 

“Hey,” he offers tentatively, and Beth stops, watches him lurch painfully off the couch. Something in her gut twists uncomfortably. For Dean, of course it’s for Dean, for the hurt in him, for what Rio did - - it’s definitely not for the reminder of what Rio’s capable of. Beth’s breath hitches, and she drops her groceries on the kitchen island. She pulls out cornflour, a mess of oranges, cinnamon quills, brown sugar. It’s enough to peak Dean’s attention. 

“You’re baking again!” 

And the thing is, it _is_ an exclamation, something shocked and thrilled, and Beth can feel herself tighten her grip on the bag. She clears her throat, resisting the urge to shove the fruit from the bench top. 

“Annie’s social worker is over tomorrow. We’re playing happy families.” 

“Sure,” Dean says. “I mean, great. I just haven’t seen you make anything from scratch since –”

At her look, he changes tacts. 

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Her look shifts to something even more sceptical – an arched eyebrow, a twisted lip, and Dean flusters, like he always does, but keeps grinning through the bruises anyway. 

“I mean, I know me and Annie aren’t exactly best friend’s, but I could definitely play her doting, rich boyfriend for an hour or so. Help level out the stuff with Greg and Nance.” 

That’s enough to make Beth level him with a whole new look. Something incredulous and bold. She’s fairly sure Annie would turn all three of them over to Agent Turner before she implied anything as much as winking at Dean, let alone being in a relationship with him. The look at least makes Dean laugh, and then, because she can’t help it – the situation is _absurd_ – Beth does too. 

“Or I could just stay.” 

The words come suddenly, like a bolt of lightning in a dark sky, and Beth startles, breath caught, fingers tensing around the countertop of the kitchen island. 

“We talked about this,” she says, and Dean shrugs, face impossibly earnest, nudging the kitchen island with his hip. 

“We actually didn’t, Bethy. Or, we kind of did. I’m giving you space, like you asked, but I want…I don’t know anymore. I just,” he flounders briefly, flusters. “I’m going to keep trying. This thing between us? It’s more than this, you know? It’s better than it. I’m not going to let you go.” 

And the thing is, there’s a deep rooted cord in Beth that is glad for it. There’d be something so kind, so familiar, in falling back into Dean, even as every cell of her body feels like it’s telling her he’s wrong. She’s not sure what there is between them anymore. Something, of course, always, but it’s not anything approaching love anymore. Rather it’s some odd, ugly heirloom you feel you’ve inherited. Something impossible to keep and also, somehow, impossible to giveaway. 

“You’re sweet,” she settles on, although there’s nothing behind it. “I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow. Are you still okay to take the kids to your sister’s on the weekend?” 

Her words are enough to make Dean’s brow furrow tragically, his hands twitch. She catches his every move, and goes back to unpacking the groceries. 

“Yeah,” Dean says as he leaves through the back. “I’ll text you when I’m on my way.”

*

So she makes cupcakes.

Orange and poppyseed with a side of vanilla cream frosting. It’s an old recipe – one of her oldest – a self-made hybrid of one of her grandmother’s and something she’d found scrolling through some bright-eyed, shiny-haired food blogger’s websites. The results, she knows, are something wonderful, and the second the smell hits her, she feels _good_. 

And she shouldn’t, maybe, because Dean wasn’t wrong. She hasn’t baked in a while. Sure, she’s cooked – dinners and post-mixes and urgent, last minute school cupcakes, but nothing like this. Nothing that felt _real_. But it’s Annie, Beth reminds herself, licking the last of the leftover batter off the spoon, and Sadie. 

It’s for them. 

“Mom?” 

The voice sounds behind her, something thin and tired, and she turns expecting Emma, just it’s not her at all. Rather it’s Danny, standing in his _Spiderman_ pyjamas, his little chin upturned, his blue eyes an impossible hue in the shadowed light of the night. 

“Hey,” she says, crouching down, and Danny just edges closer to her, slow as anything. 

“I had a bad dream,” he whispers, nervous, and Beth sighs, pulling him in close, letting him wriggle in between her legs. 

“You did? What about?” 

Danny shrugs, pushing his face into her neck, and okay, Beth thinks. Okay.

“Hey,” she says. “Want to go to bed with me?” 

Danny shakes his head. 

“I’m too big for that.” 

And some thing don’t change at least, she thinks, rolling her eyes. She purses her lips, nodding dramatically so that he can feel it, even with his little face pressed into her neck. 

“Oh, yeah, of course. Probably too big for cuddles on the couch and cocoa and a movie too.” 

Danny stills at her neck, until all she can feel is his hot breath against her skin. She runs a hand back through his strawberry blonde hair, not quite able to hide her grin when Danny sighs, put upon. 

“I think that’s okay.” 

“Oh it is?” 

It’s enough to make him giggle, to bury his face into her chest and grab at her waist with his little hands. She just holds him all the tighter, picking him up (something that’s getting harder and harder to do with the way his legs seem to be springing up out of nowhere). She makes the cocoa and ends up lying down on the sofa and loading up _Finding Nemo_ , letting Danny sprawl his long, narrow body across hers. His calm breathing, briefly, feels something close to perfect. 

She’s not sure when she dozes off – somewhere between talking sharks and learning to speak whale, but she’s startled awake by the sound of the back door opening and closing. It takes a minute for her eyes to adjust to being awake, the weight of Danny heavy on her chest, but then she looks over and it’s Rio, sliding down to sit at the dining room table. She jerks up, but has to still her movements when Danny stirs. 

“What are you doing here?” she hisses, hand gripping Danny’s sleeping head as she sits up a little straighter, only to stop. She blinks, hard, suddenly impossibly alert. “You’re bleeding.” 

“Ain’t nothin’ gettin’ passed you, huh?” 

He’s almost slumped at the dining room table in a way she hasn’t seen before, and Beth makes quick and careful work out of sliding out from beneath her son and darting across the space separating the living room from the dining. He’s still bruised enough from the fight with Dean only a few nights before (has it really only been a few nights?), lip cut, but the wound of it has obviously been reopened, staining the corners of his mouth with blood. It’s nothing though compared to that seeping through his navy button-up shirt though, staining his belly like ink. Beth has to remember how to breathe. 

“It ain’t deep,” he says, watching her watch him, and Beth flounders, remembering herself, before she tells him to wait where he is and hurries to the bathroom. She grabs a stack of washcloths, the extensive first aid kit she’d bought after her last bloodied houseguest (her belly clenches at the memory), some antiseptic wipes, and then goes to her bedroom and grabs her notebook.

When she gets back, Rio’s not in the dining room, rather he’s standing by the sofa, watching Danny sleep, her son’s little kitten snores filling the heavy air between them. It’s enough to make Beth pause, heart in her throat, her fingers tensing around the things in her hands. 

“What are you doing?” 

He blinks over at her, and if she didn’t know him well, couldn’t clock the careful consideration in his eyes, the way his mind always seems to be ticking, she’d almost say he hadn’t been staring at her son at all. 

“He looks like you,” Rio says, eyes back on Danny. “More than the others do.” 

And that much she knows. Sees it there every day in his little pouting mouth and the round pebbles of his blue eyes. He somehow managed to skip the dark hair, and the consistent, gormless look Kenny inherited from Dean, and the fairness that Jane got from Beth’s own mother. He’s her rosy child, her sunkissed boy. Beth drops her armful of supplies to the coffee table and walks around to the couch, swapping those supplies out for Danny, who she picks up uneasily, trying to ignore Rio’s weighted gaze. She struggles a little, with his long legs, but finally manages to wrap them around her waist. 

“You should sit down. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Someone must be looking out for her, because Danny doesn’t stir when she puts him to bed, nor Jane, who he shares his room with, and she steals back out of their room like a ghost, trying to straighten out her shirt, her hair, try to disrupt the sleep, still heavy in her head. 

When she gets back downstairs, Rio’s sitting on the arm of the couch, his eyes shut, and if it weren’t for the blood, the bruises, he’d look almost peaceful. 

Beth opens up the first aid kit and quickly rifles through it, finding what she knows she’ll need. 

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” 

Rio opens his eyes to look at her, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I’ve told you before, I’m not exactly qualified in this. At least, not in anything more than bee stings and skinned knees.” 

“Don’t look too bad at it to me.” 

And the truth is, she’s not actually approaching this blind anymore. Her and Annie had watched countless YouTube tutorials on gunshot wounds when they’d had the kid in Emma’s bed, and Beth hadn’t exactly stopped after that whole ordeal was over either. The deeper they got in all of this, the more time she spent looking up tips on basic first aid, on wound care, poison care (she’s covering her bases, okay?) and then on using a gun – how to shoot to slow someone down, and how to kill them too. A part of her had thought it would be enough to scare her off of all of this, but it hadn’t, and she’d filled notebooks like she was back in college, majoring in a life of crime. 

She shakes her head, lost in thought as she unpacks what she needs on the coffee table, finally looking back up at Rio and gesturing for him to sit on the sofa properly. Surprisingly, he does as he’s told, sitting close to the edge, as straight as he can, like he’s done this before (and, well, obviously), and Beth feels an odd pang of jealousy that someone else has been here before her.

She clears her throat. 

“I’m going to need you to - -” she gestures, however vaguely at his chest, which at least makes him laugh, something low and deep, guttural almost, and she has to fight the blush when he starts to unbutton his shirt. 

She’s thought about what he’d look like, of course she has. Annie had made regular work of wondering aloud exactly how inked he was (and gone on long tirades after Ruby had wondered in response if he regrets any as much as Annie regrets her horrible tramp stamp), but Beth had never really had a point of reference. The only people she’s known with tattoos before this has been her sister and a friend from her year of college with an enormous portrait of her beloved childhood dog tattooed on thigh. 

The reality of Rio is suddenly before her though, shrugging painfully out of his shirt. He’s covered in them, neck to wrist to the waist of his pants, and, presumably, below. Curling, soft things that seem to work almost too perfectly at his every sharpened angle, from the hard line of his sternum to the bookends of his hips, peaking perfectly out above his underwear. A painted man, distorted by the lick of blood at his side. 

“You alright there, darlin’?” he purrs, and Beth knows she must be blushing. He swerves a little suddenly, before regaining his composure, and right, Beth thinks. Right. She grabs the rubber gloves from the kit. 

“Is it a bullet?” 

“Nah, just shrapnel. Not a lot.” 

“Enough though. You need to lie down on your back.” 

He does, and she opens her notebook on the table, finds the right page, and re-reads it quickly. Locate the entry wound, that’s first, and well. She pulls a face, looking at his side. Clean away the blood, then apply whiskey or an antiseptic, that’s step two, so she grabs one of the wash clothes, dowses it in saline and presses it against his side. The sharp intake of breath is more than she expects, and she looks up to see his gaze fixed on the ceiling, his chest rising and falling, his skin hot at her hands, even through the gloves. There’s less blood than she thought, but she’s pretty sure that’s common for shrapnel wounds. She does the whiskey next, trying hard to ignore the way his breathing quickens again, and then the way it slows.

And right, she thinks, the next step. 

“Looks like you’re going to get your hands dirty after all,” Rio breathes, lips twisting in a smile. He’s pale, too pale, and Beth really needs to pick up the pace.

“You’ve got a quip for everything, huh?” she says, making quick, nervous work of sterilising the forceps and tweezers, and grabbing a fresh washcloth from her pile on the coffee table, opening it up in her lap, along with the antiseptic liquid. 

“Only for you.” 

That’s enough to make her tear her eyes away from the wound, to look back at his face, his blooded lip, his bruised temple, and she feels it, that thing, deep in her belly. Warm and heady and…she exhales. 

“Okay,” she says, leaning in close. She’s not sure how long it takes, to fish the debris out of the wound, but he was right at least, when he said it wasn’t deep. Maybe only two or three inches, and she tries her best to remember everything the tutorials told her about keeping things clean, and careful. Rio breathes above her, heavy and heady, and Jesus, this must hurt. He makes no other audible sound though, and after she’s sure it’s all out, she sits back, hands shaking, and grabs the saline to wash the wound again. 

“Almost there,” she says as she strips off the gloves, moves the washcloth full of shrapnel to the coffee table, tugs on a new set of gloves and grabs the suture pack from the first aid kit. Threading the needle, she has to steel her breath, to try and find some solidity in this moment, some purchase, she shakes her head, tries to calm her fraying nerves, and then Rio’s hand is on her wrist, his fingers calloused, and she blinks up to meet his look. He’s pale, and he’s swaying a little, even lying down, in pain or exhaustion, or some combination of both, she doesn’t know, but his voice when he speaks is nothing but steady. 

“You got this, Elizabeth. Almost there, right?” 

It’s enough to make her nod, to take a deep breath, and lean in and start to stitch. The feel of the needle threading through his flesh oddly reminds her of making Halloween costumes for the kids, and were she not so intent on staying focused, the thought might’ve made her laugh. She avoids looking at Rio’s face again, not sure if she could manage it, because there’s no way this isn’t something unreal. She remembers getting stitches after Kenny, after Jane, after all her little children, and even numbed with the epidural, the pain had been sharp and relentless in its rhythm. Not that she’d know it with how quiet he is. 

She finishes, finally, cleans it again, covers it with a bandage, and slides off the coffee table and onto the floor. Her breathing is shallow, and her hands shake as she pulls off the rubber gloves, dumping them with the rest of her bloodied stash. 

“I thought I was gonna have to talk you through it,” Rio says from the sofa, voice soft, softer than she’s ever heard it, and Beth blinks up at him, surprised. 

“I’m a quick study,” she replies. “And I like to be prepared.” 

He breathes out a little laugh, and then they’re both quiet, the only sounds those of occasional traffic outside, of night birds, of Buddy, yipping in his sleep on the back porch. Beth watches Rio, who keeps his gaze fixed up on the ceiling, eyes hooded, and lips lightly parted, and all that humming energy she usually sees in him has seemed to ebb, however briefly, away. 

“Why’d you come here?” 

He doesn’t reply to that, which she wishes surprised her more, and when it becomes clear that no answer is forthcoming, she gets shakily to her feet and makes quick work of cleaning up. She fixes herself a drink in the kitchen and then, after a beat, pours one for him too, but when she gets back into the living room, his eyes are closed and he could almost be asleep. She drinks both, and ends up covering him with a blanket from the linen closet. She’s thinking of what on earth she’ll tell the kids in the morning as she starts to walk up the stairs, when Rio’s voice cuts through the dark. 

“Smelt good,” he says, voice a hazy drawl, and Beth looks over at him. His eyes are still closed, and he looks almost peaceful. Almost harmless. 

“What?” 

“Smelt good. Even from the street. Smelt like something sweet.” 

Beth pauses, and right. She’d almost forgot. It feels like years ago already, not just a few hours. 

“I made cupcakes. For Annie’s social worker appointment tomorrow,” she checks her watch, rolls her eyes, and corrects herself. “Today.” 

He just hums in reply, says something she doesn’t hear, and makes himself laugh softly, and Beth watches him for a moment before she goes to bed. 

She knows she probably should be, but she isn’t surprised when she wakes up in the morning and he’s gone, the only sign he’d been there at all in the neatly folded blanket on the coffee table.

*

A lot of Beth’s early memories are in looking after people. In patching up Annie’s scraped up hands after she’d been roughhousing with boys on the playground or her bloodied up knees when she was older and roughhousing with boys in a completely different way. In holding her hand as she gave birth, and fussing about her diet (Funyuns aren’t, and never have been, dinner), and just generally making sure she got through her days in one piece.

Her memories of Dean are much of a muchness – her days spent cooking for him, cleaning for him, making house for him. _A natural wife, and sure to be a natural mother_ , that’s what Dean’s mother had said in her wedding toast, glowing with the thrill of having palmed her son off on someone who’d take care of him like she had. 

And her own mother of course, for that crippling eighteen months that Beth had been her bedside nurse, her bedturner, her homemaker, her mother’s mother, doting on her in a way she had never doted on Beth or Annie. 

Point is, Beth is used to that, but looking after Rio, somehow, feels like something different. It feels like Beth only feels when she looks after Ruby, and the realisation of that isn’t something she’s entirely comfortable with. 

It’s looking after someone who looks after you.

*

“I mean, I think it went well?” Annie says, packing up the few remaining cupcakes. Even Sadie looks pleased, grinning around a mouthful of vanilla cream.

“Yeah, I think so too,” Beth replies, rubbing blearily at her eyes. She’d played her part as best she could, keeping Annie in line, but also front and centre. Showing what a great mother her sister was, but also that she had the support in Beth, who has zero felony drug charges and a perfect, patchwork life. 

“You didn’t stay up too late making these, did you?” Annie asks, concern creasing her forehead, and Beth grins back at her. She must look about as exhausted as she feels. She didn’t get to bed until close to three, and Emma had leapt on her just after six, giving just enough time for Beth to bolt downstairs and find herself Rio-free. 

“No, Danny just had trouble sleeping, and you know, when the kids have trouble sleeping, mommy has trouble sleeping.” 

“I know that feeling,” Annie says with a sigh, dropping her arm to Sadie’s shoulder, who just laughs. 

“Like you’re not the one getting into _my_ bed in the middle of the night.” 

“Excuse me, did you buy that bed? It’s _technically_ my second bed, so you sleeping in it at all is _technically_ you getting into _my_ bed. See what I have to put up with?”

Beth rolls her eyes, finishing clearing away the food from the social worker’s visit. She’d made an executive decision not to tell Annie about the night before until after the appointment, but now she’s not sure she wants to at all. She’s not feeling awake enough to handle either sly jokes or weighted lectures.

“Speaking of,” Annie says with a hum while Sadie disentangles herself and dashes off to her room. “Where are your kids anyway?” 

Beth gives Annie a look. It seems she’s not going to get to escape either, even without bringing up Rio’s late night pit-stop. 

“With a babysitter. Not at Dean’s, if that’s what you were thinking.” 

Annie holds up her hands in surrender, but her silence is more telling than anything. 

“What are you doing about that anyway?” Annie asks, a little tentative, and Beth’s chest tightens. 

“I don’t have any new replies for you,” she says, looking away, and she can almost see Annie flush in frustration, or embarrassment, or both. 

“Why are you dragging your feet on this, Beth? You are…” and Annie stops, and Beth looks at her, and then has to look away, so overwhelmed by the naked emotion on her little sister’s face. _Stupid_ , Beth thinks. 

You’re supposed to look after her. 

“You’re the best,” Annie settles on, and Beth almost throws her neck out with the speed in which she turns back to her sister. “That’s all. You are the best person I know. You think I don’t remember shit, but I remember all of it. The way you were there for me when I got pregnant, and before that, when mom was sick, or hell, Beth, before she was. You were it for me. For so long. _Are_ it. I love a lot of people, but you, and Sadie, and Ruby. You guys are more than my family, you’re my team, and you…you’re my starting line, and maybe my finish one too, because I figure Sadie’ll put me in a home at some point, and Ruby and Stan’s love is going to power them to live until the end of time, and that leaves you and me. And maybe I’m being selfish, but I also don’t know if I can watch you get back together with him again.” 

“Annie,” Beth says, dropping her hands to her sides. “I’m not going to. I just…I’m figuring it out. I am. I promise.” 

Annie gives her a look like she doesn’t quite believe her, and then sighs. 

“What’s the saying?” Annie asks. “Shit or get off the pot? You’ve got to do one, Beth. For all of our sakes.”

*

She’s barely walked through the door before she sees the shadow in her kitchen, something long and lean and poised. Her belly’s doing blackflips when she thinks it could be Rio, and then dropping through the floor when the thick line of hair tells her it definitely isn’t. Beth lunges forwards, grabbing a knife from the sink and turning on the spot to be met with the unmistakable face of V.

“Hi,” she says, tilting a glass of Beth’s bourbon back at her, a sharkish grin on her face. “You’ve got good taste, I’ll give you that.” 

“Thanks,” Beth says, edging backwards, knife raised in her hand in a way that makes V roll her eyes.

“I relieved the babysitter. Saved you twenty bucks.”

Beth’s breath catches, and she can’t help her gaze from seeking out the stairs, dread rolling in her belly, but V curbs her worries before they can get out of hand. 

“They’re fine. In bed. I don’t hurt kids. I’d probably get a new babysitter though, she didn’t even check who I was.” 

V pushes off the counter at that, wandering back to Beth’s bar and topping up her drink. “Your kids just think I’m a new friend of mommy’s. They’re obviously getting used to that.” 

She laughs as she says it, even as Beth stands there, brandishing her kitchen knife. V continues to be the sort of good looking that Beth’s not used to seeing outside of movies. She’s just in black jeans tonight, a black tank, a leather jacket, her thick, dark hair down passed her shoulders, looking straight out of a good crime series. Something noir-ish that should be on HBO. Beth glances down at herself, in a long-sleeved floral dress, all pink tones to bring out the rosy spring of her looks, something sweet and fresh for the social worker. A model mama. 

“You want to put that down?” 

“Not particularly,” Beth replies, eyes never leaving the other woman. “Why are you here?” 

V glances back at her, gives her a quick once over before she shrugs, not unlike the way Rio would, back before they knew each other. Back before he wanted to. 

Something in Beth clenches fast, her mind whirring, trying to come up with answers to her own question as V takes another long drink from Beth’s bar. If it’s Rio - - if she’d screwed up, if she hadn’t gotten all the shrapnel out, if - - she blinks. 

“Is he okay?” 

That seems to be enough to startle the other woman. 

“Who?” 

“Rio,” she says quickly, and V looks briefly confused. 

“Is there a reason he wouldn’t be?” 

And Beth’s not sure if that’s really an answer, but V doesn’t seem to know anything about the previous night, and Beth knows enough to know that the news of a wounded king isn’t news you want getting out. She holds her tongue, and V lets it go. 

“I’m not here about him, or for him, if that’s what you’re implying. I’m here for you.” 

“For me?” Beth asks, arching an eyebrow, and V nods. 

“Well, we’re going into business, aren’t we?” 

It’s enough to make Beth jerk her head back, blink in surprise. She almost lowers her hand – the one holding the knife, but catches herself before she does. 

“Are we?” 

“That’s what the grape vine is telling me.” 

“What if we are?” 

“Then no offense, but I need to know what the fuck your deal is.” 

Beth’s grip tightens on the knife defensively, but her arm lowers all the same. After a second she drops it all together. What was it Rio was always saying? If he wanted her dead, she would be? She figures the same is probably true of V, who has the same panther-like sensibility to her that he does. (God, they must’ve been hot together. Beth flushes, ignores the stab of jealousy). She sidesteps V and pours herself a drink. 

“Why?” 

V jut scrunches up her nose in a move that only serves to make her look very, very young. 

“Because I’m in a lot deeper than you, lady,” V says, taking a sip of her drink and raising an eyebrow. “And I am not going to serve time, at least not any time soon, and especially not because someone got himself a crush on a suburban starter wife.” 

She waits for V to continue, turning over the words, trying to ignore the thrill that courses through her at the word _crush_ because Jesus, she’s in her kitchen with someone who could kill her, and she’s thinking about _crushes_ , but when V doesn’t, Beth collects herself and considers her options. In the end, she figures, fuck it. 

“I could tell you a lot of things,” Beth says finally. “About my cheating husband, and my children and my dead mother, and my sister and my best friend, but none of it matters. Not right now. Not here, between us. All you need to know is that I am tough, and I think I could be good at this, and I am, one way or another, making my life _fit me_ again, and maybe I haven’t done that perfectly, not the last few months, or maybe ever, but I am doing what I have to do to take care of my own,” and she blinks, breathes. “And me. I’m doing it to take care of me too.” 

The other woman seems to turn this over in her head, to fiddle with her own thoughts, and with the image of Beth in front of her, and they are alike, Beth thinks, V and Rio, right up until the point they’re not at all. 

“You building a brand new you?” she asks with a laugh, tilting her head, and Beth nods, oddly embarrassed, but V doesn’t seem to want to embarrass her. She has a third drink, and nurses it, watching Beth, considering. 

“You’ve got balls, has anyone ever told you that?” 

Beth blinks, surprised. 

“No.” 

V just laughs again, something sweeter this time, and earnest. 

“Well, shame on them. I get why he likes you. Rio, that is.” 

“Good,” Beth says, and then, frog in her throat. “I don’t, just for the record.” 

And it’s stupid, and it makes her feel like a little girl again, but V just looks surprised, and then she grins in a way that’s too knowing and too naïve all at once. 

“Oh, lady, forget that. I’ve seen grown ass men rollover for less, and believe me, he has too. This brand new you you’re making? She’s a fuckin’ baller. I can tell. I can see it.”

Someone next door is watching TV too loudly, and the canned sound of a studio audience laughing echoes tinnily around the room. V finishes her drink. 

“I hope so,” Beth says after a minute. “I don’t really know what I’m doing.” 

“You don’t have to yet,” V says with a shrug, scrunching up her nose again. “Fuck, I didn’t. Just do you. Look after your people, like you said. Learn fast. Those are the only rules to this.” 

Beth looks up at her, catching the oddly bright look on V’s face. 

“That’s it?”

“Well,” V says with a shrug. She spins her empty glass in her hand. “Yeah, but those rules aren’t always so easy.” 

Beth looks away at that, a tremor in her gut. She thinks of Annie, and of Ruby, and, oh god, her kids. She thinks, for maybe the hundredth time, that this could all be a horrible mistake. That she’s walking them to some metaphorical guillotine, greasing them up for the slaughter. 

“What’s your name, anyway?” 

V’s words cut through her thoughts, and Beth blinks, refocusing on V. 

“Beth Boland,” she replies, and V just scrunches up her pretty face again in a way that reminds Beth of Emma. She laughs, holds her hands up in surrender. “Rio calls me Elizabeth, if that’s any better.” 

“No, it’s not that. Boland. That’s his, right? The cheating husband’s?” 

Beth blinks, and then nods, and V rolls out a hand at the wrist. 

“Well, what’s _your_ name?” 

Beth thinks about it, but the thing is, her name is just that, her name, the one she’s always had. The one that makes her and Annie family. She squares her shoulders. 

“Elizabeth Marks,” Beth says, and V grins, something big and childish. 

“Okay, Marks. I just like to know who I’m talking to, that’s all.” 

Beth can’t help herself from grinning back. 

“Do I get the same courtesy?” 

“V,” she says, and then shrugs. “Veronica Juarez. You, me. I think we’re going to make good.” 

“Okay, Juarez,” Beth says, holding up her glass in toast, and she’s surprised when V cackles, grabbing her own glass and refilling it enough to toast her back. 

“Well, shit, Marks, I wasn’t supposed to like you, you know?” 

Beth feels something flutter in her chest, unfamiliar and somehow freeing. 

“Well, that feeling is mutual,” she replies, which at least makes V laugh. She polishes off her drink, and pauses. She has a million questions, but there’s one she thinks maybe V might just answer.

“This business we’re going into together,” Beth says, spinning her glass in her hands. “You want to tell me what that is?” 

V looks up at her then, a little surprised, before leaning her hip heavily into the counter. She gives Beth a considered look, before finally wrinkling up her nose and rolling her eyes. 

“He really doesn’t tell you shit, huh? God, he’s an asshole.” 

That startles a laugh out of Beth. 

“Look, I can’t be the person to tell you. Besides, I don’t know all of it anyway, but it’s Rio, and he’s good at what he does, and he’s way too careful to go off half-cocked, you know? Particularly if he’s, uh,” she grins a little at that, gives Beth a knowing look. “Investing assets.” 

Beth considers that, and tries to ignore the odd thrill that spikes through her gut. 

“What can you tell me then? Do you know why he’s bringing me in?” 

“Hell, it’s like twenty questions with you! No, I don’t know for sure, but you’re smart, obviously, and a good looking lady,” V says it with a laugh and a shrug. “And I mean that in both ways. You look normal, and sweet, and very white, and also very fuckable, so I guess I have my suspicions.” 

Beth has the good dignity to look completely scandalised for a minute, which only makes V laugh all the harder.

“No, Marks, nothing like that. For all his faults, he ain’t ever been a pimp. Your virtue will remain intact.” 

And then she grins, coy, giving Beth a once over. 

“Well, maybe.” 

Beth gives her a filthy look, and V grins, dropping the glass back to the sink and pushing off the counter. 

“Don’t stress. Whatever it is, you’ll know soon enough. Nothing stays secret for long around here.” 

And no, Beth thinks, she supposes it doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry there was such a long wait on this one! I've been a bit distracted with other work. Next chapter should go up a little quicker. Hope you like it. :-)


	6. Chapter 6

She’s woken up early in the morning not by the kids, or even the dog, but by the rap of knuckles on the front door, splitting through the first gasp of dawn. She has enough time to pull on her silk robe and dart down the steps when the knock sounds again, louder this time, firmer. 

“Mama?” a voice calls behind her, and Beth looks back to Emma on the stairs, one of her little hands curled around the bannister, the other on the long, loose cotton of her stuffed bunny’s ear. 

“Go back to bed, baby,” Beth sings, looking back at the door at the third knock. It’s too early for it to be the postman, or a neighbour, or a friend (certainly, at least, too early for Annie or Ruby), and it’s not like Rio (or really, anyone in his crew) has ever bothered with anything as civilised as _knocking_. Beth feels something at her neck twitch, a spasm of anxious adrenaline, and she’s reaching for Jane’s tennis racket, left, forgotten, against the side table in the hall, as she edges closer to the door. 

It’s with nervous trepidation that she opens it to be met not by a goon or a cop, like maybe she’d expected, but a woman. 

“Hello,” the woman says, her voice soft, a little hoarse. “Are you Mrs. Boland?” 

Beth blinks, surprised, her long fingers still wrapped around the handle of the tennis racket. The woman is small, smaller than Beth at least, with a thick head of dark hair, streaked with grey. She has deep lines on her face, and dark, watery eyes, tanned skin, and the sort of old soul look Beth is only used to seeing in movies. 

Beth can feel her brow furrow, feel herself look passed the woman, out to the street, only just starting to glow with the day, but there’s nothing there except for a beat-up little corolla parked close to her driveway that could only belong to the woman before her. A million scenarios go through her head, each less likely than the last, and finally, biting the inside of her cheek, Beth refocuses on the woman before her. 

“Yes, I am, and -- I’m so sorry -- but who are you?”

The woman blinks in surprise, her face marred briefly with confusion, and Beth finds herself oddly relieved not to be the only one floundering. 

“Lucia. From the agency.” 

And lo, if that only clarified a thing. Beth drops the tennis racket back behind the door, freeing up her hands to tug her robe a little tighter to her chest. 

“From what agency?” 

Lucia fumbles then in the folds of her bag, finally pulling out a small flyer and thrusting it in Beth’s general direction. She takes it. 

_Happy Homes! For all your premium domestic staffing needs._

She barely has the chance to read it before Beth feels her weight shift forwards as Emma collides with the back of her legs. Within seconds, Emma’s tangled up there, her arms curved around Beth’s thigh, and her little head pushed against her hip. That, at least, is enough to instantly soften Lucia, who crouches down to Emma’s height. 

“Hi,” Lucia says, her tone something sweet and cloying, and Emma cuddles closer to Beth, watching the stranger with hooded eyes. “What’s your name?” 

When Emma doesn’t reply, Lucia leans back, tapping her chin with a careful finger. 

“Well, you don’t look like a Kenneth, and I don’t think you look much like a Jane either. Maybe a Daniel though, in a pinch.” 

It’s enough to make Emma laugh, shake her head furiously, hard enough against Beth’s leg she’s sure it’ll bruise. 

“No! Emma!” 

“Ah!” Lucia throws her hands into the air. “Of course! _Emma_.” 

It’s all it takes for Emma to start chattering, and Lucia to look on with a wide-eyed attention that belies her age. It gives Beth the opportunity to look at the flyer again, turning it over and seeing the range of services that Happy Homes offers, her eyes zeroing in on the word _nannying_. She blinks, a lump in her throat, and focuses back on Lucia. 

“I’m so sorry, there must be a mistake,” Beth says, and Lucia stands back up, shaking her head. 

“No, I don’t think so.” 

She pulls a folder from her heavy-looking bag, and then a form from the folder, passing it to Beth, and sure enough, it’s all there – her name, address, the details of her children, their schools, their after-school commitments, her work schedule ( _varied_ it says, which is enough to make her roll her eyes). For a brief, heady second, she thinks maybe it’s Dean, but then, no. She knows exactly who’s done this. She bites the inside of her cheek to try and curb the rush of blood to the outside of it. 

“Well,” she says after a second, glancing up at Lucia and widening the open doorway. “I guess you better come in.”

*

Lucia proves a quick study, which is more helpful than Beth can say, especially when she gets a text not twenty minutes after Lucia’s arrival from a number she doesn’t recognise, telling her to be out the front of her house in half an hour. Beth barely has time to show the woman where the coffee lives before she’s dashing upstairs to shower, make herself up, and step into a pair of black jeans, boots, and a baby blue sweater she’s been told makes her eyes look something electric.

She’s standing out front, body thrumming with an unfamiliar energy (annoyance? Anxiousness?) but ready to go when the car pulls up, and the back door is pushed open, and she’s ready to give Rio a tongue lashing – for disappearing after she’d stitched him up, for not replying to her three, four, okay-maybe-almost-ten texts she’d sent him asking if he was okay / alive / getting real medical attention in the twenty-four hours since she’d seen him, for apparently gifting her a _nanny_ of all things, as what? Another debt for her to pay off? A thank you? A business perk? Only she doesn’t get the chance.

She doesn’t get the chance, because it’s not Rio in the car. Instead, with his large body leaning over the steering wheel, is one of Rio’s most regular goons. 

It’s enough to make her hesitate, but the guy looks back at her, a lazy, hooded look to him that makes Beth clear her throat and slide in to the back seat. 

“I guess your boss man had more important things to do today, then,” she offers, clipping in, and the guy who Beth’s fairly certain goes by the name of Bullet, doesn’t deign to reply, just speeds off down the street and out of the suburbs. 

She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t nervous. If there wasn’t a livewire of terror twisting in her gut, and _stupid_ she thinks, for getting in at all. Surely Rio would’ve told her he wouldn’t be picking her up, but, then again, she could probably count the number of things Rio _has_ told her on one hand. Plus, and something in her gut clenches at the thought, what if he’s not _able_ to tell her? What if he can’t pick her up? What if she missed a bit of shrapnel, or the wound wasn’t clean enough? What if whoever put that shrapnel there in the first place came back to finish the job? Her fingers tighten uncomfortably in the strap of her purse, and her foot starts to jitter against the floor of the car.

If Bullet thinks a thing of it, he doesn’t say it, just keeps driving in a steady, uncertain silence. 

They’re only a little out of town, maybe a half hour at most from Beth’s place, when Bullet pulls up to a warehouse (and, honestly, really? Does Rio have a warehouse realtor on speed dial?) and climbs out of the car. Beth fumbles behind him, still a little wary, even when Bullet opens the passenger side door for her and lets her scoot out. The place is cushioned in a string of similar-looking warehouses, all with heavy, roller doors and windows covered, either by tarps, heavy-legged machinery or wooden boards. All in all, she can’t imagine a more suspicious looking place, and it settles like a stranger seed in her gut. 

“Where are we?” she asks, looking up at the place, and Bullet shrugs, tilting his head towards the side and directing her to a small, heavy-looking door there. She clears her throat, taking the lead, Bullet only ever half a step behind her as they clear the distance and, finally, push through. 

If the outside looked suspect, the inside doubles down, just in an entirely different way. It’s clean to a fault, and wide open, crammed full of people sorting boxes, filing product, directing large-weighted boxes to the few square feet of space left. It’s nothing like the active project space she’d seen in Rio’s last warehouse, and yet it’s not a total departure all the same. The phrase _closing costs_ in Rio’s steady lilt rocks through her head and, okay, Beth thinks, taking a breath. Closing costs. 

Bullet gives her shoulder a nudge, tilting his head sideways, and Beth follows his look to catch a sudden glimpse of Ruby, directing a pair of men carrying what can only be a cast iron bathtub towards the back corner of the warehouse. 

Heart in her throat, she starts forwards, only turning back to mouth a brief _thank you_ to Bullet who jerks his chin up in acknowledgement, before she gets to Ruby. 

She touches her on the arm, and it’s all it takes for Ruby to spin on the spot, body poised for action, but when she sees Beth, her face instead splits into a wide grin and she pulls her in for a hug. 

“Babe! You finally made it to the clubhouse!” 

“Something like that,” Beth replies, inhaling deeply as Ruby does the same. They take a step back, and there’s so much Beth has to ask, so much she _wants_ to. She hasn’t spoken to Ruby in days, and Ruby’s missed their usual catch-ups to try and work this shit out with Stan, and god, Beth has so much she needs to tell too. 

“Later,” Ruby says, like she’s read her mind, and gestures instead to the warehouse. “You were right about the shut down by the way.” 

“I’m always right,” Beth squares her shoulders in a way that makes Ruby laugh. “What is this stuff anyway?” 

Ruby just shrugs, waves her hand out at the wrist and offers up a long-suffering expression. 

“Supplies, mostly, I think. A lot of chemicals. A lot of, y’know, _wrapping paper_. They’re storing stuff, but there’s other stuff coming in too.” 

Beth bites the inside of her cheek, juts out a hip. “What sort of other stuff?” 

Ruby gives her a look. “They haven’t exactly given me an itemised list. They tell me to stand somewhere and bring shit in, and I do it.”

“Right,” Beth says, shifting her weight and watching the others work. It’s all it takes for Ruby to soften. 

“I’d tell you,” Ruby says. “You know that. As soon as I knew a thing.” 

And _right_ , Beth thinks, because of course she would, just like Beth should be doing – with Rio’s attention, and patching him up, and V’s visit, and now the nanny, but the words stick like taffy to the roof of Beth’s mouth. She’s saved from replying by Annie suddenly appearing in front of them, broad grinned and apparition like in her speed. 

“Didn’t expect to see you slumming it any time soon,” Annie offers with an easy grin, and Beth glances around nervously, but no one seems to be paying them much attention. “Figured you’d be up in your golden tower for a _little_ longer.” 

That at least is enough to make Beth roll her eyes and fold her arms across her chest. 

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a golden tower,” she says, and Annie’s grin twists into a smirk. 

“What _are_ you doing down here, anyway?” Ruby asks, and Beth flounders briefly, heart in her throat. 

“I don’t know. Rio didn’t pick me up today, one of his…” and what’s the word? What can she say here? “ _Boys_ did.” 

She can’t help the odd, uncertain tremor to her voice, can’t help the quake to her fingers as she clutches at her own sides. The warehouse is warm, warmer than it probably should be, and Beth can smell the potent mix of bleach and sweat, growing thicker between them with every breath. She takes a deeper one herself, glancing up to catch both Annie and Ruby giving her confused looks, and right, Beth thinks. _Right_. She steps a little closer, looking around briefly to make sure no one’s listening in. She lowers her voice. 

“Something happened, the other night, with Rio. I can’t tell you what, at least not here, but I’m worried something’s happened to him.” 

Ruby and Annie exchange a look that Beth can’t quite work out, and she opens her mouth to say something, only for Ruby to cut her off. 

“Honey, he’s here. He’s been here all morning, at least since I got here. He seems fine?” She pulls a face at her own words. “Well, he seems like his usual self. Maybe ten per cent more asshole, but you know, it’s really just a spectrum with him.” 

Somewhere across the warehouse, somebody drops something – something heady and metallic, the sound ricocheting through the space. Beth just blinks, hard, words caught in her throat. She shakes her head, eyes fixed on Ruby. 

“What do you mean he’s _here_.” 

“Just that. He did like, a lap before, and came out and talked to his boys – Bullet and that one with what I’m pretty sure is an infected eyebrow piercing, but otherwise he’s been up in his - - I mean, I don’t know? Office? Would you call it that?” 

“Watchtower,” Annie interjects, then, waving her hands. “No! Oh! Barad-dûr!”

Ruby blinks.

“Bara-what now?” 

“Barad-dûr! It’s Sauron’s tower in _Lord of the Rings_ , jeez, and you say I’m not up to date with current affairs.” 

“Okay,” Ruby says, clapping her hands together. “Knowing some dated nerd shit does not- - ” 

“Guys!” Beth interjects. “The point is he’s here? Now?” 

Ruby pauses, gives her a look that means she has a lot she wants to say to her, but Beth can’t think about that right now, and Ruby seems to understand that too. She gestures with a tilt of her forehead towards a small clutch of rooms raised up in the roof, set back like a satellite station. “He’s come out a few times, but not - - Beth, what are you _doing?_ ” 

And Beth doesn’t know. All she knows is that there’s something in her chest, at her legs, pushing her towards it, like a rip in the ocean, guiding her towards its most dangerous depths. She’s not sure if Annie or Ruby try to follow her, because she doesn’t - _can’t_ \- look back. All she can do is keep moving. 

There’s no one standing guard at the bottom of the stairs, or at the top, like maybe she’d expected (but then, what does she think this is? _Lord of the Rings_ like Annie? Or, something in the back of her head echoes, something _medieval_?) and the slim, yellow door is closed, but a quick twist of the handle shows it isn’t locked, and Beth pushes through before she can think twice.

She’s met with a stuttered silence, and then three sets of eyes, the necks that hold them twisting to meet her. The office is neither exceptionally large, nor exceptionally small, and it boasts only a narrow, generic desk, a chair, and piles of boxes stacked against the furthest wall. There’s an open mac book on the desk though, something sleek and new, and a few heavy-duty looking binders, cleanly opened. 

The two men standing look perhaps the most startled. One is vaguely recognisable to her as the better-dressed man she’d seen Rio talking to after they’d first brought the wrapping paper from Canada, but the other is a complete stranger. Tall, with silver hair, pale, sallow skin, and an exceptionally well-tailored suit. He’d have been handsome in his younger years, but has an odd tinge of desperation to him now that Beth can’t say she doesn’t recognise. 

Sitting behind the desk with a catlike grace, and a cool, marginally annoyed look on his face, is Rio. 

Beth flounders briefly, hand still curled around the door handle, suddenly oddly embarrassed. The feeling only doubles down when the silver-haired man turns a questioning gaze to Rio, opening his mouth to obviously ask a question, only to think better of it. Rio clocks it though, leaning forwards on his chair, and closing the mac book screen. He holds the thing up for the other man to grab for. 

“It sounds good,” Rio drawls. “Draw it up. I’ll be in touch.”

The silver-haired man grins, something bright and wild, starts nodding too often and too quickly. 

“I can have it for you by the end of the week.” 

“You’ve got three days,” Rio says, and the guy briefly flounders. 

“I can’t, I mean, I – ”

“You can, and if you want my business, you will.” 

The man starts talking in rapid fire English, and Rio only looks at the other man, who nods shortly, packing up his things and pulling both himself and the silver-haired man out of the office, giving Beth a furtive glance as he passes her. 

They disappear from view, and Beth turns her attention back to Rio. There’s still that livewire of anger in her gut, from his complete and utter ghosting after she’d stitched him up, but she can’t help the blanket of relief that covers it now, however briefly. He’s handsome (always), but especially so in a dark grey shirt, buttoned to the neck as his always are. The bruises from his fight with Dean are finally starting to fade, lulling him back to his usual miles of honey skin. 

She half expects him to get mad at her, like Dean would for interrupting, like, to be fair, most people would, but Rio just grabs his pencil and turns his attention back to his binder, filling in a couple of equations with a nimble hand. 

“The funniest thing happened this morning,” Beth says after a minute, closing the door behind her and leaning back against it. “A woman showed up claiming to be my new nanny.” 

Rio doesn’t even look up from his work, just keeps going, his fingers making careful traction across the page. After a beat, two, he replies. 

“I’m waitin’ for the _funny_ part.” 

“The funny part is I didn’t _hire_ a nanny.” 

“Sure sounds like you did.” 

Beth frowns, that anger finding its way back up through the relief, and Rio keeps doing whatever it is he’s doing, his pencil making scratching little sounds on the paper, calculations, she thinks, or, at least something with numbers. She can do numbers. 

“Is she coming out of my pay cheque?” 

That’s enough to make Rio lean back in his chair, to scrunch up his nose and clench his eyes shut in that way he does when he’s trying to stamp out the flame on his short fuse. He takes a breath.

“I can’t have you distracted, or mouthin’ off because you gotta take Shirley Temple to tap class. Now you won’t be.” 

Beth watches Rio slump forward, going pointedly back to his work, and Beth knows a dismissal when she sees one, she does, but she’s spent too long being dismissed. Like an omen, V’s words from the night before echo through her head. _He really doesn’t tell you anything._

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she says, pushing herself off the door and taking careful strides towards his desk. When she gets there, she drops her hands to the surface, leaning across it enough to be at his eye level. “Rio, if this thing between us is going to work, you’ve got to start answering my questions.” 

“What thing?” 

And Beth blinks, finds herself standing a little taller above him again, an uneasy twist in her uneasy gut. 

“What?” 

Rio looks at her then, properly, for maybe the first time since she’d burst through the door. His stare is heavy, and licks like a cold flame. 

“What thing between us, Elizabeth?” he says, lazy and stoic. “Last I checked, you work for me, that’s all. Like everyone else downstairs.”

And it’s there again, that livewire of anger, only now it’s red hot, furious, rampaging through her veins, bursting up below her skin and just – just - 

“ _Bull_ ,” she hisses. “I just work for you? Do you show up for all your _employees_? Have coffee with them? Take them to your secret meetings? Hire _nannies_ for them? Break into their houses bleeding for them stitch you up? You’re so full of shit.” 

He stands up then, too quick, and it’s enough to startle her, make her fumble back when he comes around his desk and at her with all the speed and grace of an apex predator. He’s close, so close that Beth can feel his breath, warm, at her temple. 

“What did I say about trying to tell me what to do?” 

Beth feels her face tighten, and she’s ready to yell, to go off, by hell, she _is_ , but then Rio sways sideways and Beth finds herself darting forwards to grip his waist, to walk him back around his desk and ease him into the chair. Her hands immediately go to pull up his shirt, to look at the wound, but Rio’s hands quickly find her wrists, pushing them away. 

Beth frowns, wriggling her wrists from his grip, and trying again, only to have the motion repeated. She has to take a breath to tamper her frustration. 

“Just let me look at it.”

“No.”

“Why not?” 

“Because I said no.” 

“Why are you being so stubborn about this?” 

“I’m not,” he grits out, and Beth could almost laugh, right in his ridiculous face. 

“You know, if you weren’t being such a baby, I could’ve checked it by now.” 

He just does that thing where he clenches his jaw, right in the back, in a way that she knows means she’s pissing him off. 

“Don’t even try that mamma shit with me, sweetheart,” he growls, and Beth rolls her eyes, resting her ass back against the desk and dropping her arms to her sides. She watches him for a minute, two – the little line of sweat at his brow, his deep rising chest, his eyes, fixed, unblinkingly back on her. A cornered animal. Beth meets his gaze and holds it. 

“I’m going to look at it,” she says. “One way or another, and it’ll be less embarrassing for both of us if you just let me.” 

For a minute, she thinks he won’t. His glare is so heady, so strong, and were she anyone else – hell, were she _Beth_ , three months ago, she’s not sure if she’d be able to meet it, but he hasn’t hurt her yet, and Beth firms her stance. 

Finally, Rio just rolls his eyes, sagging back slightly in his seat and lifting his shirt enough for Beth to crouch down before him, pull the patch off and peek at the wound. Surprisingly, it doesn’t look too bad – Beth’s handywork being better than even she’d thought. There’s only a little bit of dried blood around the wound, and no puss, or signs of re-opening, or infection. She closes it back up, and looks up at Rio, who’s watching her with the sort of intensity that catches her breath. 

“Told you it was fine,” he hums, and it’s Beth’s turn to roll her eyes. 

“You didn’t actually.” 

At that, Rio looks away from her, pushing his shirt down with a careless hand. He looks at the folders on the desk, at the far wall, at whatever he can that isn’t her, and Beth rests back on her haunches. 

“Does it hurt?” 

He does look at her at that, his gaze focused, his lips pursed. He opens his mouth to say something, what, she’s not sure, but closes his mouth, opting for a shrug instead. 

And fine, Beth thinks. Fine. 

“Does anyone else even know?” 

“Not anyone still breathin’.” 

The words come sharp, like a bullet through the soft flesh of the moment, and Beth looks up in time to catch Rio’s eye, to see him staring at her, his eyes dark, his lips pursed, almost like this is a test, a dare, _something_. All that relief, all that anger in her, it’s suddenly swallowed up by something entirely new – something equal parts terrified and broken and unsure. Something that looks her right in the eye and asks her what the _fuck_ she’s doing in a place like this, with a _man_ like this. 

Beth rocks up to her feet, pushing her hair behind her ears. 

“Why are you always trying to scare me off?” she says. “I thought we were passed this.” 

It takes Rio a moment to reply, long enough she’s not sure he even will, but when he does, it’s not what she expects, and certainly not what she wants. 

“I ain’t tryin’ to do nothin’ except be honest,” he replies, and the words sink like a stone in Beth’s chest.

*

Beth has barely had the time to walk in the door, relieve Lucia, and pour herself a drink, before her front door is burst open and Ruby strides through, a fresh bottle of wine in hand.

“Excuse you,” Beth says, tilting her glass of bourbon in Ruby’s general direction, and Ruby just flips her off. 

“Girl,” she replies. “We have _a lot_ to talk about.”

*

So they talk about Sara, who’s taken to her new kidney like a duck to water, and the job, which Ruby vows is better than the diner (but she’s reserving final opinions until her first wad of cash), and then they talk about Stan.

“We’re okay,” Ruby settles on, spinning her wine in her glass. “I think. I hope. I told him everything, and he hasn’t run away yet. I think he’s still processing it. He knows I did it for the right reasons…that I did it for our baby girl, just…you know Stan. He’s always liked rules. I think he finds it hard to understand why people would break them, even with the best reasons.” 

And Beth considers this. She turns it over in the careful hands of her mind, and finally settles on mugging a face at Ruby, her forehead creased, her lips downturned. 

“But you’re not _people_ ,” she cries, and Ruby laughs, but there’s not a lot behind it. 

“No, I’m his wife, and who knows if that makes it better or worse at this stage,” she sips on her drink, arching an eyebrow over at Beth. “Speaking of…” 

“God, please don’t ask about Rio,” Beth groans, and Ruby reels back in surprise, pulling a face halfway between shock and amusement. 

“No, babe, I was going to ask about Dean, your, you know, _actual_ husband, as opposed to, what? Your husband in crime?”

“He is _not_ my husband in crime.” 

Ruby arches an eyebrow, takes another drink, and she gives Beth a bit of a lecherous grin when she says, “I don’t know, you and him were up in Barad-dûr for a long time.” 

Beth chooses to ignore that grin. 

“How has Annie already got you saying that?” 

“She is very persuasive. And look, it’s not perfect, but it’s a good placeholder until we find out exactly what this tower is.” 

Beth just rolls her eyes, folding back onto the couch, her head lost in the cushions. Her glass of wine has left a rim of condensation on her jeans, and she oddly likes the way it soaks through. The way it leaves its mark on her. She tilts her head sideways, her glance catching on a photograph, hanging on the wall. It’s her and Dean at their tenth wedding anniversary party. It was luau themed. Beth’s wearing a lei, and new lingerie that Dean won’t ever see. He’d be too drunk by the end of the night, and Beth would spend half of it with her head in the toilet, mistaking what she didn’t yet know was Jane-induced morning sickness with a bad cut of pork. 

“Dean, my actual husband, asked if I remembered prom,” she says then, the words fighting their way up from a deep, unpleasant cavern in her, something she doesn’t want to say. “He asked if I remembered corsages and having sex in Sarah Patinski’s family pool at the after-party, and he said it was the moment he knew I was the love of his life, and I just…” 

She presses the heel of her hand into her eye socket, pushes there until she feels the tremendous weight of it. She opens her mouth to say something, but the words escape her, and all thoughts of Dean suddenly feel too much – a mix of anger and hurt and betrayal and, worst of all, love, but perhaps not the sort of love she should feel for a husband. Rather the sort of love you feel for a childhood bedroom – something lived in, and precious, but something you don’t fit in anymore. Perhaps haven’t for a long time. 

“I don’t know,” she finishes, and she can feel tears building at the backs of her eyes. “I don’t know.” 

Ruby doesn’t say anything, not right away, but when she does, it’s not what Beth expects. 

“God, prom.” 

Beth blinks up at her, surprised, and Ruby just grins, something big and good and kind. 

“Do you remember our dresses? They were matching.” 

That’s enough to make Beth laugh, the movement relaxing her face enough to let a single tear escape. She swipes it away. 

“Shockingly, I do remember our satin mermaid-tail dresses with their tulle slips.” 

“Yours was teal, mine was _hot_ fucking pink,” Ruby reminisces, a hand to her chest, and it only serves to make Beth laugh all the harder. 

“They were so ugly!”

“And you _know_ we thought they were so glam,” Ruby hums with a laugh, and Beth leans forwards to catch her breath. 

“God, prom. You know what I remember?” Ruby continues. “I remember us spending hours crimping your hair and drinking your mom’s wine coolers. I remember you painting my nails teal, and me painting yours pink, so we’d be alternating.” 

“We were so embarrassing,” Beth says, cringing, and Ruby nods, laughing.

“I remember my dad driving us in and I remember dancing with you to TLC and Natalie Imbruglia’s _Torn_ and I remember us taking mystery pills in the staff bathrooms while fucking Misty Miles got dubbed prom queen.” 

“Annie can never know about that. The pills, I mean,” Beth says, holding up a hand, and Ruby just gives her a look. 

“Obviously.” 

Ruby sighs, leaning back into the couch. 

“The point is, Beth, I have a million memories of prom, and Dean is in _maybe_ three of them. Hell, I have a million memories of _you_ and Dean is in maybe three of them. You keep acting like you aren’t all the things you are, all the things you have been, without him, but you are. You always have been. Because at the end of the day, fuck Dean. He can say whatever he wants, but you ain’t the love of his life, you’re the love of _mine_. And I know I’m the love of yours too.” 

For a second, a breath, a moment, Beth thinks this is it. That this is the happiest, and most complete she’ll ever feel. She swipes the tears away. 

“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “You are.” 

Ruby’s crying when she says:

“Bitch, what did I just say. I _know_.” 

Beth just gives her a look, which at least makes Ruby laugh, and Beth rolls her eyes, watches Ruby for a minute, as the conversation passes into kind and easy silence, and then, fuck it, she thinks. She tells Ruby everything – about the meadow and the visits and then Rio’s wound, and V showing up, and the nanny, and what Rio had said, and by the end of it Ruby’s a shade Beth hasn’t seen before.

“Just to establish the facts,” Ruby says finally. “He _isn’t_ your husband in crime?” 

Beth flips her off, and Ruby laughs, but there’s not a lot behind it. 

“I don’t even know where to start.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” Beth agrees, folding herself back into the couch, and Ruby watches her closely, her forehead furrowed, her lips parted. 

“Do you like him?” 

“What?” 

“Do you like him?” Ruby asks. “I’m not…” 

She huffs out a breath, closes her eyes briefly, and when she opens them again, they’re somehow even deeper than before. 

“There’s a lot to unpack in this, Beth, but we can’t do any of it until we both know this. Do you like him?” 

There’s a heat in Beth’s cheeks that won’t shift, won’t move, won’t do a thing, and she feels herself flounder, her hands wave, the tightness in her chest balloon. 

“In what way?” 

And Beth knows that’s given Ruby all the answer she needs, can see it, right there on her face, but Ruby doesn’t let her off the hook. 

“In any way, Beth. In general, specifically, whatever. Do you like him?” 

“Yes,” Beth says. “I...” 

She catches her breath. 

“There’s something there, between us. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t think he does either, but I think he feels it too. I mean, he has to, right? I feel it all the time. I’ve never felt anything like it.” 

Ruby smiles, in a small, sad sort of way, and Beth wants to leave it at that, but finds she can’t. 

“And I keep thinking, oh, it’s the danger thing, and because,” she flounders briefly, waving her hands. “Because he’s a younger man, and it’s because of Dean, and I’m a total fucking cliché, but then I’m stitching him up in the middle of the night, or in his car, or – or _fighting_ with him in his Bara-whatever, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be.” 

Ruby doesn’t reply, and Beth laughs, something short, self-deprecating. 

“So, I’m a little pathetic.”

“You’re not pathetic,” Ruby says, quick as anything. “This is unchartered waters for you in _so many_ ways, and y’know, me and Stan met at my cousin’s wedding almost twenty years ago, so I don’t exactly feel like a well of advice.” 

“Maybe there are support groups?” Beth asks, and Ruby laughs. 

“If they are, you do _not_ want to be in them.” 

Beth grins, taking a sip of her wine. She promptly frowns, the dread rising up in her gut. 

“We work together.”

“You do.” 

“He’s definitely killed people before.”

“He has.” 

Beth blinks, looks up at Ruby, and Ruby just sort of shrugs. 

“This is our lives now,” Ruby says. “We’ve all had to make decisions, and sacrifices, and I don’t know what the world looks like anymore, but I _do_ know the way he looks at you, and, from what I hear, the way he tries to look out for you, and it’s more than Dean ever did. Hell, it’s more than most guys do, and if you like him, and if you, me and Annie are doing this, maybe there are worse choices you could make.” 

Beth looks away, heart in her throat. 

“It’s not - - _I’m_ not - - pursuing this thing for…for protection, or whatever. Hell, I’m not _pursuing_ it at all, it’s just…” 

“That’s not what I meant. All I meant is that it’s not a perfect choice,” Ruby says, and then, with a shrug, and a grin, “But you could do worse. And if it is a mistake, we’ll figure it out.” 

“You’ve got to be careful,” Beth replies after a minute. “That almost sounds like a blessing.” 

Ruby laughs, swinging her legs off the sofa and getting to her feet. She reaches out for Beth’s wine glass, which Beth gladly offers, watching as Ruby starts back towards the kitchen. 

“It’s not,” Ruby calls on her way through. “It’s a fuck it. We’re here now. What was it Kenny’s soccer coach said? Go big or go home?” 

“I don’t think he meant it in a sexy way,” Beth calls, dropping her hands to her lap and grinning, and then, “Well, god, at least I hope he didn’t.” 

Ruby snorts on a laugh, and Beth can vaguely hear the sound of wine being poured and then a click, and then a gasp. Beth is off the couch faster than she can think, dashing for Jane’s tennis racket, still in the hallway, and bolting into the kitchen. 

It takes her a second to take stock – to catch Ruby’s wide-eyed and, thankfully, just surprised face, and then, there, leaning sideways against the backdoor jam, hands buried in his pockets – Rio. 

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Beth says, lowering her tennis-racket-wielding arm, and Rio just gives her an incredibly (unfairly) amused look.

“’the hell were you plannin’ on doin’ with that?” he asks, and Beth gives him a filthy look. 

“Some damage, obviously.” 

She flips the racket in her hands, which is enough to increase Rio’s amusement about ten-fold, and, when Beth catches Ruby’s gaze, enough to increase Ruby’s embarrassment about the same amount. Ruby takes a deep heady gulp of her wine instead, passing the other glass to Beth. 

The three of them stand like that, oddly quiet, as Rio crosses one of his legs over the other, relaxing into his pose, watching Ruby, watching Beth. After a minute, Ruby rolls her eyes, dropping her glass to the counter. 

“Seems time for me to go.” 

She pulls Beth briefly into a hug, kissing her temple, before grabbing her bag and heading not for the front door, like Beth expects, but for the back, leaning into Rio as she passes. She whispers something Beth can’t hear, and Rio’s eyebrows raise dramatically as he looks back at Beth. 

With that, Ruby leaves, and Beth and Rio are left staring each other down in her kitchen. Beth drops the tennis racket to the counter and tops up her drink. By the time she’s turned back, Rio has pushed out of the doorway and picked up the racket, enough to spin it once, twice, three times in his hands. 

“Seriously though, what do you expect to do with this?” he asks, and Beth shrugs, has a drink. 

“More than what I could do without it.” 

Rio acknowledges that with a shrug, dropping the racket gently back to the bench. When Beth waves the wine bottle at him, he, surprisingly, nods, and Beth pours him a glass. 

“I didn’t take you for a wine drinker,” she says, passing it to him, and Rio just shrugs again. 

“Depends on the company.” 

That at least is enough to make Beth blush. She hadn’t changed out of her powder blue sweater, her jeans, but somehow she still feels less together than she had in the morning. Something turned out and twisted. She hopes her make-up hasn’t run, that she looks alright, and then promptly has to kick herself for caring. 

They both take a drink, and Rio ends up sliding into one of the bar stools. He doesn’t lower his hand to his wound, but she almost sees it all the same, the ache in his belly. She has to resist the urge to get to his side, to tug up his shirt and see it again. 

“Well?” she asks, dropping a hand to her hip instead, and Rio arches an eyebrow in her direction. 

“What?” 

“Why are you here?” 

“I can’t swing by?” he waves the wine glass at her. “Grab a cup of sugar?” 

She just stares at him a moment, at his deep set eyes and the gentle twist of his dangerous mouth, and Beth feels herself harden. 

“My feelings haven’t changed since this morning. Hell, _sweetheart_ , my mood hasn’t. You can’t do this. You can’t treat me like a…a partner one minute, and then like dirt the next, I won’t do that, not again, and not with you.” 

Rio just looks at her, and Beth meets it head on, but he doesn’t reply, and Beth takes another drink. 

“Why’d you hire a nanny for me?” 

“I told you, I can’t have you distracted.” 

“From what?”

And from the look on Rio’s face, she knows it’s the right question. He finishes off his drink, dropping his glass to the counter. 

“So I have an opportunity,” he says, and something in Beth’s chest clenches.

“What sort of opportunity?” 

“My business – the money…it’s on hold, at least for now.”

And Beth has to resist the urge to laugh, roll her eyes, _something_. She settles for arching an eyebrow, dropping her own glass to the counter and crossing her arms over her chest. 

“I kind of figured.”

Vaguely, Beth knows the kids are asleep upstairs, that Buddy still needs to be walked around the block, that she still has to make Jane’s costume for Spirit Squad auditions, and all those thoughts, all the places she could be, swim quickly to the front of her mind when that look crosses Rio’s face – something dark and dangerous and yes, she thinks, medieval. 

“Well you ain’t exactly innocent there, sweetheart,” Rio all but growls, and Beth grabs the bottle of wine, topping them both up with a quick hand, and finding herself oddly relieved when Rio lets her. 

“I have something in the works, like you seen. Somethin’…upmarket.”

That’s enough to make Beth pull a face. 

“What do you mean upmarket?” 

Rio looks at her then, somehow amused, annoyed and angry, all at once, and he seems to be rotating through a script in his head, trying to figure out what the best course of action will be. Finally, to Beth’s surprise, he seems to settle on honesty. 

“Art. Fake. It’s middle ground, ain’t no Monet or Picasso shit, you feel me? But we’re goin’ good. Some Rubens, some Wilkie. Things people want, but ain’t gonna check too hard on, y’know? Especially if someone like you is selling them.” 

Beth’s chest clenches, the words caught in her throat, hands still tight around the bottle of wine in her hands. 

“What?” 

Rio looks away, looks, briefly, awkward, as he rolls his shoulders back, takes a sip of the fresh glass of wine she’d given him. 

“V’s gotten herself a solid counterfeit game with local work – paintin’s, screen prints, that sort of thing. She has networks, connections…” he huffs out a little laugh. “I have better ones. I think we can merge business, do better, and with a face like yours, I know we can.” 

“A face like mine?” 

Rio considers her for a second, before rolling his eyes. 

“Some yuppie white guy sees me at a sale, he’s thinkin’ its bullshit. Some yuppie white guy sees _you_ at a sale…” 

Rio snorts a little, leans back in the barstool and gives Beth a look from head to toe that more or less sets her alight. She clears her throat, takes a nervous, uncertain drink. 

“Plus, you can lie,” he adds with a shrug. “I can get the product made. I can get us slots – at auctions, private sales, whatever. I can’t be the person standin’ there doin’ it, not if we want them to think it’s legit, you feel me?” 

“You want me to be the face?” Beth asks tentatively, and Rio nods, slow and lazy. It’s enough to make Beth frown deeply, her belly clenching. 

“That puts me out there, but you know that, right? What better way to keep someone on the hook?” 

“Not on the hook,” Rio says. “It ain’t that. It’s...practicalities. Hell, it’s _physicality’s_. Ain’t my fault the world is racist as fuck. Sexist too, if people show up thinkin’ because you got tits and a sweet face you can’t rob them blind.”

Ignoring the comments (compliments?) on her appearance, Beth replies slowly, “Which we’re going to,” and Rio laughs, eyes brighter than she’s seen them in a while. 

“Yeah, we are.” 

He hums in further confirmation, pulling the wine bottle from her hands and topping up his drink, and Beth feels her heart beat out of her chest, something proud and honest and _good_ , even if it’s bad. 

“So,” she says. “More than just an employee.” 

And Rio blinks at her, surprised, but then shakes his head, laughing again. 

“Shit, sweetheart, if you didn’t know that already, you ain’t as perceptive as I thought.” 

“To be fair, you did ice me out today.” 

“Yeah, well you pissed me off today.” 

“Oh, I did?” Beth says, grabbing her drink. “You piss me off most days. I mean, how the hell did you even know the kids’ schedules?” 

Rio rolls his eyes, tilting his head towards Beth’s fridge, at the monthly planner she has there, decked out in glitter pens and highlighter. She feels her cheeks flush, oddly embarrassed for the childishness of it. 

“You should’ve asked, before you hired her,” she says, after a minute, and Rio looks at her. 

“Okay,” he replies, and she’s not sure what she’s expecting, but it’s not the frank honesty in his tone. 

“Okay,” Beth says, taking another drink. She can feel Rio’s eyes on her, the intensity of his focus, and she has to resist the urge to shy away or preen. To do anything that might shift this tender game between them. 

“I’m asking, by the way,” he says. “Right now.” 

Beth blinks. 

“What?” 

“The job. You in, or are you out?” 

And Beth reels back, eyes tracing his face, clocking the deep line between his eyebrows, the uncertain twist to his lips, his deep, perfect eyes. 

“I thought I didn’t have a choice?” 

“There’s always a choice.”

With that, Rio stands up, closing the distance around the counter between them until she can feel his breath, until she can smell him, feel him, and, briefly, headily, she wonders if she could taste him. 

“Make yours, Elizabeth,” he says, and Beth catches her breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Better late than never! Hope you liked it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long! I had written this out, along with the next chapter, about a month ago, and my computer managed to completely die, and I lost both. It took me a while to sit down and write it again. Hopefully it's not too bad!

He’s so close. 

Too close, somehow, even with a few steps still between them. It’s all she can do to nod sharply, tuck her hair behind her ears, clear her throat. She looks away, and when she looks up again, Rio is watching her, that familiar, heated look about him, eyes half-lidded, lips parted. 

“Cool,” he says, after a beat, and at least it’s enough to make Beth breathe out a laugh. 

“Cool? Is that how you shake on all your new business dealings?” 

“More than you’d think.” 

She looks down at the glass in her hand, watches the liquid pool in the bottom, swirls it, disrupts it, tries to focus on it – anything that can get her racing heart to slow. She bites the inside of her cheek. Hard. 

“What’s next then?” she tries instead, and Rio finishes his own drink, turns abruptly away from her, and rinses his glass in the sink, dropping it to the dish rack. 

“I gotta talk to some people. Test a few waters, you know? I’ll send V by. She’ll get you ready – show you the ropes, get you lookin’ the part.” 

He looks her up and down then, considering, but not in the way he usually does. There’s something cooler about it all, more driven, and something in it makes Beth a teenage girl again, but not in a sweet way. She resists the urge to smooth herself out. 

“Then we’ll do something small,” Rio continues. “Try it out, see how it goes.”

“I thought we didn’t try,” Beth says dryly, and Rio laughs, some short, sharp thing, just under his breath. 

“No, but I don’t win by accident neither.” 

Underneath the glow of the kitchen lights, Rio looks somehow softer. The shadows of the evening finding places to nest in the deep groves of his eyes and the usually hard lines of his face. It reminds Beth oddly of the bonfires she’d go to in her brief time at college, of watching boys who weren’t Dean swapping open-mouthed kisses with girls who weren’t her, passionate and free below the blanket of night. 

He must catch her staring, because he tilts his head in that odd little way he does, his eyes growing darker, a feat Beth didn’t think possible. He considers her carefully, like she’s a puzzle for him to work out, and a deep itch in her gut wonders how quickly he’ll be done when he realises the way out of the maze of her was through all along. 

Right now though, he doesn’t seem to find the answer. He clears his throat, rocking forwards on his toes, and pushing off her counter. 

“Alright then,” he says, moving towards the back door and Beth suddenly flounders, darting forwards to meet him before he gets there. 

“Wait.”

She reaches out, grabbing his arm, pulling him back towards her, and no, she thinks, worried, suddenly, about what, she’s not entirely sure. About hurting him? Pulling the amateurish stitches she lay in him? About baiting that livewire of anger in him, that she knows is a constant, ebbing hum. About… 

But Rio does wait. He _does_ turn around, and he looks at her in a way she can’t decipher, and she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she really doesn’t, and she thinks about kissing him, about holding him, about feeling the static of his hair beneath the hard lines of her nails, but then he arches an eyebrow at her, and Beth catches her breath. 

Rio huffs out a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh, and gently pries her fingers off his arm. 

“Get some sleep, Elizabeth. It’s going to be a long week.” 

And just like that, he disappears through the back door and out into the night.

*

So she goes through her closet.

She’s not entirely sure what drives her to it. It can’t just be that look Rio gave her. _Can’t_. Surely she’s not that insecure. It’s got to be something to do with the heady swell of wine, crashing against the walls of her skull, or the conversation with Ruby, or thoughts of Dean, or the promise of a new job, or if it’s even the baser urge to get her mind _off_ Rio; but at the end of it all, Rio leaves for the night and she goes upstairs, and she flings open her wardrobe doors and she just… _stares_. 

If she’s honest, she doesn’t think she’s ever been exactly fashionable, or even had a really defined style like Annie does. Hell, Beth hates most of the stuff Annie wears, but Beth can guarantee she can walk into a store and pick up three things she knows her sister will love. 

Beth’s never loved clothes. Or maybe she did, but it was before puberty made a _lot_ of woman out of her before she was ready, and she started wearing clothes too big as a form of armor, and it was definitely before she started looking at clothes for practicality over looks – first when she moved home to take care of their mother, and then for the kids. Besides, she didn’t need to. She already had Dean. She could look nice for him on date night, but she didn’t have to otherwise, and all in all it’s meant that she hasn’t worn a skirt shorter than knee length since college, or a dress that cuts much lower than her clavicle since her wedding day. 

That’s not to say she doesn’t like her clothes, or that she doesn’t know the colours that suit her, or the shapes that do, it’s just she hasn’t exactly known who _she_ is for a while. It’s more obvious than not when she looks through drawers of faded mom-jeans and Detroit-winter sweaters, floral blouses, blowy jersey dresses (perfect for forgoing ironing), and a couple of designated date-night dresses, form-fitting, but still with relatively conservative necklines. 

She glances at herself in the mirror, at the curve of her, runs a finger down the neck of her sweater and pulls it down slightly, to expose inches of snowy skin, and cringes, dropping her hand away. _Act your age_ she thinks, that’s what mom would’ve said.

She has a drink, brow furrowed, and starts with three piles – keep, donate, offer to Annie or Ruby. She’s halfway through (and a few drinks deeper) when her phone buzzes on the bed, the screen lighting up with a text from Ruby. Beth grabs it. 

_Soooooooooo…_

The message is followed by the wink emoji, then the kissy face, then the eggplant. Beth rolls her eyes, flopping down onto her mattress.

_Really?_

_Yes really. Do not leave me hanging._

And then, rapid fire: _Also thanks for txting back so quickly. He still gives me the willies._

Beth sighs, lips pursing. She looks down at her hand, the one that had grabbed him. She can almost still feel the lean width of his arm, caught in her grip. Her cheeks heat, and she has to push her head sideways into the bed. It’s the wine. 

That’s all. 

_He left a while ago. We’ve got a new job. Come over for breakfast?_

It takes a while for Ruby to reply, and Beth finds herself eyeing off her closet, at the few dresses still left hanging. She’s pulled enough out now that she can see the heavy train of her wedding dress, from where it’s stuffed back into the furthest corner. Once she’s seen it, she can’t _unsee_ it, and she ends up off the bed, wandering over to the closet and pulling it out.

She doesn’t think she’d even fit into it now, not after four kids, but still, she holds it against her body, eyeing her reflection in the full-length mirror. It really is a beautiful dress. Something chic and timeless. It had felt like a prize when she first tried it on, but oddly, less so on her wedding day, when her mother’s words had still been so fresh. 

_You will hate all of it._

But her mother had been wrong, Beth thinks with a frown. She hadn’t hated it. Or, at least, she hadn’t hated _all_ of it. 

Her phone buzzes again, and Beth steps back to it, laughing when she reads Ruby’s reply. 

_Bitch, you better have a better story for me by then._

*

“So, I’m confused,” Annie says in the morning, sliding into the barstool behind Beth’s kitchen island, a coffee cup in hand. “Like, I felt I was very clear.”

Beth arches an eyebrow, pushing her own coffee cup to her lips. Suddenly she regrets breakfast. It’s earlier than she’d originally meant – just she’d dropped Kenny and Jane at the middle school, and run into Annie, picking up some stuff found in Sadie’s old locker, and it had seemed silly to part ways when they would see each other so soon. A quick text to Ruby had brought them all here, barely past 8.30, sprawled out across Beth’s kitchen, battling the morning sun. 

“Clear about what?” 

“About telling me _everything_. Instead I had to hear it all from Ruby.” 

Beth’s gaze diverts to Ruby, levelling the other woman with a stare as she sits beside Annie at the counter, making studious work of looking down the well of her coffee mug. Finally, Ruby sighs, turning to meet Beth’s look and clasping her hands together at her chest. 

“Beth, I love you, but you have to understand that I also love gossip, and that the quality of gossip since you decided to get in deep _whatever_ with a gangbanger is a lot jucier.” 

That at least makes Beth roll her eyes, jut out a hip and take a sip of her own coffee. 

“Well, I don’t know what’s _juicy_ about a new job offer, but-”

Annie just scoffs, loud enough to jar. The sound is curt, and kind of mean, and Annie obviously hears it too. She shakes her head, blinks hard, and finally waves out a placating hand. 

“Look, sure, I want to hear about that too, but first I want to hear about him showing up in your kitchen late at night, like some sort of sexy, tangible ghost.”

“So, like a person,” Beth says, deadpan, and Annie rolls her eyes.

“I stand by what I said. A little birdie might have mentioned that it might not have been a one-time thing, too.” 

Beth looks at Ruby again, who only holds up her hands.

“I only told her about last night.” 

So she drops her gaze back to Annie, who shrugs. 

“Your sweet children might’ve mentioned something about mommy’s new friend with the neck tattoo coming over after bedtime, and unless you know someone else under that pretty astute description, I’m going to trust my instincts.” 

And fine, Beth thinks with a sigh, ignoring the pang in her gut at the news her children know more than she thought, and instead she tells Annie everything too – the whole kit and caboodle of V’s visit, and Rio showing at her place, beaten down, about patching him up, and their confrontation at the warehouse, and then again the night before. 

Annie and Ruby do a wonderful job of sitting deliberately enthralled opposite her, gasping and grinning at the right parts (and the not right parts too, if Beth’s honest). She’s not sure what she’s expecting at the end of the story, but it’s not for Annie to clap her hands together and lean even further across the kitchen island, a smug grin on her face. 

“So, I think I speak for both Ruby and myself when I say the first question that needs answering is what does he look like with his shirt off? Don’t skimp on the detail either, missy, I want to know every ripple in every muscle.” 

Beth blushes, but covers it with an eye roll, swirling around the last of her coffee in its mug. 

“I was a little distracted with the whole _open wound_ thing, Annie.”

“Please, there isn’t enough distraction in the world. I’m picturing a low key six pack, but nothing like, overly defined? Basically the perfect six pack, right? He could almost be born with it, it’s so effortless. Like, he’d be all, _oh, are these perfect abs?_ , only you _know_ he works out.” 

If the ground could open up and swallow her whole right about now? Yeah, that would be perfect. Beth clears her throat, takes a long drink of lukewarm coffee and tries to push the picture of him, there, vulnerable and half-naked, out of her mind. 

“Honestly, it wasn’t like that. He needed help.” 

“Sure,” Annie says amicably as Ruby grins at her side. “And how exactly, dear sister, did you help him?” 

She makes a vague gesture towards Beth’s body, wriggling her eyebrows as she does it, and Beth flips her off. 

“I have many talents, Annie, but laying stitches with my - _you know_ \- isn’t one of them.” 

“Vagina, Beth, say it with me. Vagina.” 

She’s saved from replying (and saying vagina) by a knock at the door, and she ignores Annie and Ruby’s laughter to answer it. She’s not sure what she’s expecting, but in spite of Rio’s words the night before, it wasn’t V, standing in a black pencil skirt and a fitted, maroon turtleneck sweater. 

“Marks,” V says with a breezy grin, and Beth tilts her head, surprised. 

“What are you doing here?” 

“In the harsh light of day? Our friend asked me to swing ‘round. Give you the induction training, like this is a fucking Starbucks.” 

She laughs a little at her own joke, and Beth rolls her eyes, turning around and heading back towards the kitchen. 

“You want a coffee?” 

V hums a noise of concession, and Beth tries to ignore the vague knot of tension, forming between her shoulder blades. She takes in Annie and Ruby’s tentative looks, and opens her mouth to introduce them, but doesn’t get the change. 

“Ruby Hill, Annie Marks,” V says with a nod, grinning at their shocked expressions. “What? I’ve been briefed.” 

“V,” Annie replies quickly, sitting up a little straighter. “Van--Veronica, even. So have we.” 

Ruby gives her a look, and Annie briefly hisses a _You know I’m terrible with names_ under her breath which at least makes V laugh. 

“I’m on strict orders to take all three of you anyway,” V says, taking the coffee Beth makes her. “Give his boys the day off playing babysitter.” 

“Babysitter?” Beth says, and V rolls her eyes, leaning back against Beth’s counter and taking a sip.

“Don’t take it personally, Marks.” 

Beth opens her mouth to reply – to say what, she isn’t entirely sure. Something about the induction, about if it was Rio who said _babysitting_ , and if so to make a mental note to herself to talk to him about Lucia again, but she never gets the chance. 

“Take us where?” Ruby asks, interjecting. 

“On the rounds, show you the ropes, you know?” and then she grins, giving Beth a once over as she takes another sip of her coffee. “And I’m supposed to take you shopping.” 

“Shopping?” Ruby says sceptically, and Annie positively huffs.

“What, does the new job come with a company uniform?” 

V laughs, loud and knowing. 

“Something like that.”

*

“So it’s selling paintings?” Ruby asks, sceptical, from the backseat, and V nods, eyeing off one of the few spare spots left in the parking lot.

It’s still early, but it’s a work day, a school day, so the mall is ultimately dominated by stay-at-home moms, retirees doing those extreme walking groups (which, _honestly_ , Beth really hopes isn’t her future), and the elderly piling bags of groceries into the fat bottomed trunks of their cars. It hardly seems the time for an induction into some new criminal code, but then, Beth isn’t exactly sure what time is anymore. 

“Sure,” V says, her fingers drumming on the wheel. “Look, rich dudes aren’t buying paintings, they’re buying signatures, they’re buying history. We give that to them.” 

“But it’s not real,” Annie says, and V shrugs. 

“Real to someone. It’s not all that different than what you were doing for Rio before. You were washing cash, it’s the same, that cash just looks a little different.” 

Beth considers this carefully. Thinks of the way Rio had taken her to the art supply store, gotten her to talk about paper. It was silly though, child’s play. Even then, she’d known that wasn’t what he’d wanted. She bites the inside of her cheek. 

“I still don’t understand how I’m - - how _we’re_ supposed to help you with that.” 

From the driver’s seat, V laughs, eyes crinkling at the edges in a way that, for once, makes her look like Beth’s peer, instead of her daughters’. It’s enough to make her sigh, sit a little straighter in her seat. She gestures loosely out the side. 

“There’s a park there.” 

V gives her an odd, half thumbs up from around the steering wheel and pulls in. It’s not long before they’re all piling out of the car and heading up towards the mall. Beth has to squash the small, odd twist of dread in her belly, and is surprised to realise that it’s not because of the circumstances at all, but rather that she hasn’t been to this particular mall since facing off against a lingerie store clerk over That bill and That thong. She cringes a little to herself more than anything, and is oddly relieved by the way Annie appears at her side, like she knows, nudging an arm around her waist in a tight sideways hug. 

“Anyone can tell you that there are two core elements to business, right? Supply and demand. But really, there’s a little more to it than that. There’s manufacture, there’s distribution, there’s sales. I believe you helped out with the second of those in Rio’s last ah, _venture_?”

Ruby nods, and V tilts her head in acknowledgement, slowing briefly as she walks passed a particularly incredible pair of blood red heels in a store window. She taps her fingers on the glass, before picking up the pace again. 

“Well, you’re moving up in the world.” 

Beth scrunches up her nose. Rio had said as much, but it still leaves an odd twist in Beth’s belly. 

“You want us in sales?” 

“Well, you and Hill. Little Marks will be…” V tilts her head side to side, considering. “Sales adjacent.” 

Annie stops dead in her tracks, so much so that Beth and Ruby do too, a few steps ahead, turning to face her. 

“Sales adjacent? What am I? Trisha Paytas?” 

At their questioning looks, she says, “She’s on YouTube, it’s funny, I swear. God, you guys are old. Point is, why not me?”

V? V hasn’t even stopped. She’s still a few feet ahead, eyeing off the stores, stepping around the crowds of people, slow in the stretch of morning, going about their days. 

“It’s kind of hard to explain when you’re green to the whole thing.” 

V finally pauses outside a boutique dress shop – something Beth is pretty sure would drain the last of her laundering profits in a neat couple of skirts, but V just gestures her head towards it and they all follow her in. The store is a beautiful portrait of colour and shape – bold prints, figure hugging silhouettes, tailored pants. A shop assistant makes a vague look towards them, but V waves her off with a neat flick of her hand. 

“You could try to explain,” Annie says vaguely, unable to help herself from picking up a navy pencil skirt with a print of artistic white bones. 

“I could,” V agrees, equally distracted, and Beth just looks between the two and rolls her eyes. She turns around to say something to Ruby, only to see the other woman has vanished from her side and is across the other end of the store, pulling out a (pretty incredible) mustard-colour blouse. 

Beside her, V starts to rifle through dresses – pulling some out and eyeing them off, before dropping them over her arm. She pulls out one – a svelte red dress with a plunging neckline and a deep leg slit – that makes Beth blush to the roots of her hair, and she laughs nervously when V drops it over her arm too. 

“What kind of sales, exactly, are we getting into?” 

“Like I said, art,” V says, her grin twisting a little wicked at the edges. “But hey, whatever helps men look a little less closely at the canvas helps.” 

Beth swallows, watching as V pulls out another dress, black this time, with an off-shoulder sleeve and a swooping cut that even she knows would work with her pale skin. She looks sideways again for Ruby and Annie, but both are distracted, off across the store, pulling out clothes. She clears her throat, and steps a little closer to V. 

“Did that instruction come from the top down?” 

V does look at that, arching her eyebrow. 

“You asking if Rio wanted me to make you up sexy?” 

Beth blushes, but can’t ignore the fold in her belly. V just laughs though, pulling out another dress. 

“No, he didn’t. He’s new to this trade, you know? Almost as new as you are. I mean, he knows sex sells, but who doesn’t, right?” 

She laughs a little, looking up, and she must see something on Beth’s face that gives her pause. V’s quiet a minute, before she purses her lips, leaning bodily against the clothes rack beside her. 

“He’s not trying to make you over, if that’s what you’re worried about. Like. He’s not _grooming_ you, or tryin’ to make you something you’re not, or whatever. He’s obviously into your ugly beige sweaters or we wouldn’t be here right now.” 

Beth shakes her head, feeling stupid, and V goes back to rifling through dresses. V. In her pencil skirt and her fitted shirt and her six-inch heels, and - - 

“He was with you though, wasn’t he?” Beth says, because she can’t help herself, and when V turns to look at her, forehead furrowed, a little, twisting grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. Beth can feel herself blush. 

“He tell you that?” 

“He didn’t have to.” 

V considers this, and finally nods, looking back through the dresses on the rack. “We were for a little while, I guess. It wasn’t that serious. Rio isn’t often that serious, not with women, you know? I think we generally got each other though, even when we didn’t really know each other, if you know what I mean?” 

The words strike a chord, somewhere deep. 

“And then that turned into sex, turned into more than sex, and then none of either. We used to fight too much, and sometimes that worked for us, but other times it didn’t.” 

V suddenly looks very far away, her dark features drawn, her expression furrowed, and Beth half regrets saying anything at all. 

“Rio’s not really an easy person to be _with_. He’s cagey, you know that. That ain’t something that changes, and you’re…I don’t know. He’s…” 

She shakes her head, then blinks back up at Beth, a considered, considering look on her delicate face. 

“I guess what I’m saying is if you’re wanting white picket fences, this is the wrong road to be walking down, Marks.” 

Beth watches V watch her, and finally, haplessly, shrugs. 

“I’ve had white picket fences,” she says. “They didn’t make me happy.” 

It’s enough to make V snort on a laugh, rock back on her heels, and start towards the dressing rooms. 

“Alright then, Marks. Let’s go try on some dresses.”

*

So she tries on the red dress.

Do what scares you, right? 

It’s a perfect fit, and honestly, Beth’s going to have to ask V how she knew that, but for now, it doesn’t seem to matter. For now, Beth looks in the mirror and barely recognises herself. It’s not that she doesn’t _know_ she’s got a figure, it’s not even that she doesn’t know that she’s, well, not _ugly_. Just she’s always been a little awkward too, a little unsure of her body, restless in her own skin, and never once has she thought she looked _sexy_. 

This dress? 

Okay, she looks a little sexy. 

She tugs up the cleavage plunge a little, tries to conceal the deep cut of her bust, and then thinks, _fuck it_ , and tugs it back down to where it naturally sits. It’s low, and even she can’t keep her eyes off the way it reveals the good, distinctly female softness of her, the milky hue of her so easily marked. The leg slit doesn’t ride quite as high as she thought it would, coming to a modest open at the middle of her thigh. It’s off center, and gives the dress an asymmetrical line designed to catch a gaze and hold it. 

And okay, Beth thinks, turning around, ignoring the stranger fold in her belly that says _if_ when the curtain pulls aside and Ruby steps in. 

Beth barely has the chance to spin around to see her before Ruby is staring, startled, open mouthed and wide eyed straight at her. 

“ _Damn_ , Beth.” 

The blush finds her, quick and easy, exploding at her cheeks, down her chest, and she resists the urge to cover herself. Instead, she looks, at Ruby, decked out in a gorgeous ivory dress with a thin, blue embroidery across her chest that brings out the rich colour of her skin and her hair. 

“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” Beth says quickly, and she means it too. 

“You look amazing,” she adds with a grin, and Ruby juts out a hip, drops her free hand to her neck as she tilts her chin up. 

“I know.” 

She fixes her pose, grinning at Beth, and then says, “You know, I was raised not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but I have to keep going. _Jesus_ , Beth.” 

Beth’s blush only deepens to the roots of her hair, and she laughs, cringes, somehow all at once. She looks at herself in the mirror again, somehow still shocked. She knows her body. She’s pretty sure she knows her body, but like this it feels somehow new, something fresh and sexy and just hers and the thought terrifies her in a way she didn’t think was possible. She takes a deep, gulping breath. 

“Am I making a huge mistake?” 

“What?” 

“I can’t do this. I’m not…this isn’t me, you know? I know I haven’t been happy, but like. This is zero to a hundred, right? Putting it mildly? I need to - - I don’t know.” 

She crouches down, tugging the slit of the fabric back up awkwardly when it exposes a neat mile of her pale skin, and Ruby just sighs somewhere above her. 

“Beth.

“This is insane, right?” Beth says. “What we’re doing is insane?” 

She folds her arms over her chest, lets her eyes slip shut as she takes a few deep breaths. Above her, Ruby just shifts her weight between her feet, finally sighing, leaning sideways into the wall of the change room. 

“Beth, a few months ago we robbed a grocery store. _That_ was insane. Robbing rich white guys of their money? That’s a promotion. And so, _so_ far from insane it’s basically a crime more people aren’t doing it.” 

Beth breathes out a nervous laugh. 

“I might be leading us into disaster.” 

“We are choosing disaster,” Ruby says. “You think I’m letting you do this shit alone? We’re a team, remember? _We_ are choosing disaster. Annie too, although some would say she’s more of a mascot.” 

Beth laughs at that, dropping her head to the wall, bumping it, before looking back up at Ruby. 

“It sounds like V agrees.” 

And then it’s Ruby’s turn to laugh, nodding. She calms down quickly though, running a hand back through Beth’s hair, sweet and intimate. 

“Yeah, so relax, that’s all I’m saying.” 

“I’m not good at that.” 

“No shit, but I’ve got you.”

“I know,” Beth says, reaching back to clutch at Ruby’s hand. She stands back up, straight and firm, adjusting the dress, and it’s a good thing she does, because it’s seconds before the curtain is being pulled back and Annie’s there, letting out a long, lone wolf whistle. 

“Well, damn, ladies,” V says, not half a step behind her and grinning wide. “I think we might just be onto something.”

*

She’s still unpacking her bags in the bedroom when there’s a knock at the door downstairs. Beth checks her phone, but there’s no cursory message, not from Ruby or Annie, or from Lucia, who’s picking the kids up from school and doing the hobby-club run, and it’s enough to send her belly fluttering as she heads downstairs.

Only the silhouette through the glass is too tall, too broad to be Rio, and all too familiar too. Beth grimaces, takes a breath, and opens the door. 

“Did you change the locks?” 

Beth blinks, startled, and Dean looks back at her, eyes wide and lips turned down, and Beth looks at the keys in his hand and sighs. 

“You’re using the wrong one,” she says, taking the key ring from his hands. She finds the right one, pushes it into the lock, turns it, so he can see the latch flip. “This one’s for the back door. You’re the one who got the locks changed, remember?” 

Dean just stares at her then, giving Beth the chance to take him in. The swelling in his face has gone down at least, leaving him a little softer, and Beth feeling a little less guilty. His hair is ruffled, suit too, but otherwise he’s looking better – a little thicker again, which means he’s staying at his mother’s, which means she’s feeding him, and taking care of him, and Beth is oddly glad for it. 

“Can I come in?” 

Beth sighs, but stands wide, and Dean trundles in, eyeing off the house uncertainly, like he’s unsure what in it he’s allowed to anymore, and Beth resists the urge to tell him all of it or none of it. She shakes her head, walking towards the kitchen to pull out a box of frozen fish fingers. 

“What are you making?” 

She holds the box in his direction, and he doesn’t reply, sliding into a stool at the kitchen island. Beth flips on the oven, and starts to pull out pans. She’ll make chips, but she’ll toss a salad too – lettuce, tomato, cucumber. She starts to pull them from the fridge. 

“Where are the kids anyway?” 

“A babysitter has them. I had to run some errands.” 

He seems to accept that, however briefly, as Beth continues preparing for dinner. 

“We need to talk,” Dean says, and Beth blinks over at him. “About us.” 

“About us?” Beth asks dryly, grabbing the vegetables. “I told you, Dean, I need time.”

“You’ve had time,” he insists. “I need to know if there’s a chance for us.” 

It’s not what she was expecting, and when she turns around, Dean isn’t giving her the kicked puppy look he’s given her for the last few months (longer, really, if she’s honest with herself). Instead, there’s something firmer. Stronger. It’s enough to make Beth uncertain. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I want more than anything for things to be how they were, but they can’t be. I know that’s on me,” he adds, after she gives him a look, and, after a beat, continues. “I just want to know though if there’s a still a chance for you and me, whatever that might look like.” 

And Beth looks at him then, really looks, and she hasn’t realised she’d shaken her head until Dean’s face drops, his eyes welling with tears. Something in her shifts, breaks, something in her - - 

She blinks back her own tears. 

“Can you be honest with me?” she asks, and she’s not sure where it’s coming from, not sure where these words are forming, but suddenly she knows they’re the right ones. “Why’d you do it?” 

“What?” 

“Why’d you fuck her?” 

Dean just shrugs awkwardly, and something clicks into place. Beth blinks rapidly, her eye twitching. She briefly plays with one of the carrots, rolling it on the kitchen island, before she stops, letting her fingers clench around the benchtop instead. She has to ask, she knows she has to. 

“Was it just her? Was she the only one?” 

The silence is heavy, heady between them, and Beth can hear the sounds from the street – cars, crickets, from the neighbors, watching shitty TV, and then she can hear Dean, crying at her kitchen counter, and Beth lets her eyes flutter shut before she hears herself do the same. 

“How many?” 

“Two others.” 

“Who?” 

All romance is lost, Beth thinks, when he opens his mouth so quickly.

“There was a woman, at a conference a couple of years ago, it was a one off, and then she came through town, and maybe there was a second time, but it wasn’t really anything.” 

“And the other woman?” 

Dean drags his feet on this one, can’t quite meet Beth’s eye.

“Janey Salmon. Kenny’s friend’s mom. The widow. It wasn’t long. It was…with how you were after you had Danny. I was lonely. I felt like you hated me, every time I walked in the door. All you wanted to do was be with the kids, or with Ruby. Janey was lonely too, and she was nice.” 

Beth thinks of having Danny. Of the way he’d gotten stuck in her, and the way she’d laboured with him for close to three days. Of the doctors, pulling him away over minor complications that had felt catastrophic to her, an experienced mother, but not one used to a sick son, however briefly. Of the ways she’d cried and prayed, even after they’d given him the all clear, given him back to her, how long it had taken to scrub her mind of the picture of her newborn son with a tube in his nose and a needle in his arm and a wall of plastic between them. How long it had taken her to get over the fact that there were some things she’d never be able to protect him – any of them – from.

“How long is not long?” she asks instead. 

“A little over a year.” 

Beth reels back, swiping at her eyes. 

“You were still fucking her when I got pregnant with Emma?” 

He tries for a smile then, something bashful and honest and cruel. 

“You getting pregnant with Emma was the reason I stopped.” 

Beth shakes her head, feeling suddenly claustrophobic, pushed down, desperate and hot, and Dean steps closer, as if to comfort her, but Beth shies from his touch. 

“Why?” 

“I mean, jeez, Beth, we had another kid on the way.” 

“No, not why you broke it off with her. Why wasn’t I enough?” 

“You were,” he insists. “You _are_. I don’t know. I don’t know why I fucked us up. I’ve asked myself this a million times over since you kicked me out. I just…”

He takes a deep breath. 

“I was never a priority for you, you know? It was school, and then your mom, and then Annie, then the kids. I don’t think we ever got to be just us.” 

“Just us?” Beth says, and she can barely fight back the tears. “I did everything for you. I let you do everything you ever wanted. 

Dean looks away, picking at the hem of his shirt, and Beth sighs, swiping at her eyes again. 

“Why cancer?” she asks. “Why that? You know that’s how I watched mom die.” 

Dean’s very quiet then, his brow furrowed, and when he looks over at Beth, he starts crying, his face turning an unflattering red, and Beth can’t quite help her own feelings of remorse, uncurling like a flower in her gut. 

“I think I knew it would hurt you more.”

And it’s the kicker really – the punch. She pushes back, away from him, and tries to catch her breath. She feels like she’s been winded, and it’s all she can do not to reel back, to vomit, to _something_. 

“Get out,” she chokes out, and Dean rushes her. 

“Please, Beth, you know. We – we’re talking, right? That’s what’s important right now.” 

“What’s there left to talk about?” 

“We could always pretend,” he says, like he’s barely heard her. “For the kids’ sake. Just until they finish school.”

Beth laughs, but there’s nothing in it. 

“You want to do this for another twelve years?” 

“Maybe we’d feel differently.” 

“We’d either get used to each other again, or we’d hate each other, and it would hurt even more than this does. Dean, I want you to leave. We’ll work something out, for you to see the kids, but I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t want you - -”

“Beth.”

He comes around again, and finally she shoves him back, voice firm. 

“Dean, we’re through, it’s done. There’s nothing left to say about us. You’re no longer welcome here.”

“Beth - - Bethy, please, just – I know I’ve fucked up, in so many ways, I _know that_ , but I also know that I love you, that you’re the love of my life, that – ” 

And it’s Ruby’s words, echoing in her head, that give her the strength to say “You’re not the love of mine. Leave, Dean, before I make you.” 

“Or I will.” 

Beth blinks, spinning around, to see Rio in the back doorway, his face closed, and his eyes hard as he looks from Dean to Beth, and she’s only to aware suddenly of the tears marring her cheeks, and the red, swollen look she must have about her. He nods at her, little more than a brief tilt of his head, and Beth breathes out hard. 

“Are you fucking him?” Dean asks suddenly, and Beth looks at him, startled, and there’s so many words, burning on the tip of her tongue, insults and rants, but in the end, she just sighs. 

“No, Dean. I’ve been faithful to you. I wish you could’ve given me the same. Go. Please. If you love me as much as you say, just leave me alone.” 

Dean opens his mouth, once, twice, three times, blinks, gormless in the naked air, and finally, with a hiss and a heady look of remorse, he shoves Rio aside, and he leaves. 

It’s a minute, two, as Beth wipes the remaining tears from her face, before Rio says a word. He’s still standing in the doorway, not yet broaching the floor of her home. 

“I can come back,” he says it like a statement, but she knows him well enough to know it’s a question. She shakes her head, gesturing him inside. 

“Or,” she says. “You can have a drink.”

*

She fixes them both a drink, even though there’s a little part of her that wonders if the look of her now – tired, swollen from tears and probably _old_ , won’t surely scare him off. She’s not quite sure she could flirt right now, or play those odd, charged games they play, even if she wanted to.

So she’s not quite sure how she feels when she spins around from the bar and finds him in her living room, looking at the photos on her mantle and running his fingers delicately, almost intimately, across the furniture that holds them. 

“Two nights in a row seems a lot, even for you,” she says, taking a sip of her drink and walking his over to him. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’d missed me.” 

He takes the drink, turning to look at her. Take her in. A part of her wonders about fixing herself up, patting down her hair, squaring her shoulders, but finds she can’t be bothered. She’s about to turn away, take his lack of reply as she usually does when suddenly he reaches a hand up and cups her cheek. He chases away a tear she hadn’t realised was there with the rough, warm pad of his thumb. 

“This have anything to do with me?” he mumbles, and Beth blinks, eyes wide, takes in his considered, considering look. To anyone else, it might look cold, but she’s starting to understand the spectrum of his closed expressions – to know that the twitch at his downturned lips means he’s unhappy, that something inside him… she blinks again, shakes her head, leaning into the warmth of his touch before she can help herself. 

“No. It’s about him, and it’s about me. That’s all.” 

He nods, but his hand lingers, a beat, two. She watches him, watching her. His tongue ducks out to wet his lips, but then he drops his hand, taking a step back, and Beth immediately feels the loss of it. She takes a breath and ends up around on the couch, pushed back against the armrest as she drinks in silence, watching him push back against the wall, watching her right back. 

“You and him. You’re…” Rio says, waving a hand out vaguely between them. He doesn’t quite meet her gaze though, and it’s enough to make Beth furrow her brow. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was almost uncertain. 

“I don’t know,” she replies, voice a little hoarse, turning the thoughts over in her head. “We’ve been together a really long time. We’re figuring out what _not_ being together looks like, I guess. It hasn’t…it’s…” 

She gestures vaguely, and doesn’t miss the way his shoulders relax a little at that, the ease finding its way back into his step. It leaves her fifteen again, sweaty palmed and knock kneed. She tucks her hair behind her ears and gets up again, beelines for her home bar. She grabs the bottle of scotch, waves it in Rio’s direction, and he quickly finishes his glass before walking it back to her. 

“You ask me, you cut him off.”

Beth rolls her eyes.

“Careful, you’re starting to sound like my sister.” 

“I ever mentioned I like your sister?” 

Beth arches an eyebrow at his grinning face as she pours them both a drink. She’s surprised, how easy this banter is. Something she can relax into, despite herself. 

“No, and it won’t win you any brownie points,” she says instead, even though it totally will. If his Cheshire cat grin is anything to go by, he knows it too. She passes him his drink. 

“It’s not that easy, anyway.” 

“Four kids,” Rio hums, predicting her answer. He takes a drink. “And a shit ton of debt.” 

“And I loved him,” Beth says, which is enough to make Rio falter. She’s not sure what she’s doing. She’s just tired, and she hurts. She lets her eyes slip shut and takes a wobbly breath. The other affairs don’t surprise her, they don’t, it just doesn’t make them hurt any less. 

“Lovin’ someone doesn’t always matter,” Rio responds vaguely, and she looks back up at him with an arched eyebrow as he swirls his drink in its glass. 

“It usually does in a marriage.” 

He just gives her a look at that, and Beth throws an arm out to the side, gesturing to the house, the pictures, whatever. She doesn’t even know anymore. “Marriage,” she repeats, unable to keep the patronising tone out of her voice. “I’m sure you’ll get to experience it in all its glory one day.” 

“What makes you think I haven’t?” 

Beth blinks, surprised, and Rio looks oddly smug back at her, like he’s pleased to have held this one over her. Something inside her tightens to an uncomfortable level, and she lets out a little breath, but she doesn’t move away. 

“You’re married?” 

And Rio just shrugs, like it’s nothing. 

“ _Was_ married,” and then, with a little laugh. “Shit, a long time ago now.” 

He barely waits a beat before he scrunches up his face at her, his lips pulling up into a strange, halfway sort of smile. 

“You really think you got that many years on me?” 

Beth just gives him a look, which makes him laugh. 

“You ain’t, for the record. Besides, I make up for it in other ways. All this shit,” he gestures vaguely to himself, but the intent is clear – all the _crime_ shit. “You’re green. A freshman.” 

“And what, you’re a senior?”

“Nah, like, a head of faculty or somethin’ at this point, right? I’ve been around.” 

She snorts, and he grins. 

“I got a feelin’ there’s a few ways you’re still green.” 

The look he gives her then is something between affectionate and lewd, and if they were any less familiar, she might have slapped him. As it is, she just flips him off, which only serves to make him laugh again. 

They’re quiet for a moment, as Beth rolls his words over in her head. Finally she groans. This is what she’s been thinking about after all, isn’t it? 

“Am I that obvious?” 

“In what?” 

“My…I haven’t…I mean, sure, four kids, you know, but I’ve been with Dean a really long time, and I’m just not…” 

She flusters again, can’t even choke the words out, and at his wide eyed, surprised look, she’s suddenly mortified. She waves a hand in his general direction. 

“Forget I said anything. Please.” 

He nods, looks, for a second, uncomfortable, but then quickly covers it. Beth finally shirks out from her spot at the wall, slinks back to the couch and rests her weary body. She shouldn’t be this tired. So she shopped, but then, Dean, a little voice whispers, and Beth almost wants to cry again. 

She’s wondering if there’s any easy way to get Rio out in one piece so she can go have a long, hot bath, and a long, hot cry, but then Rio’s talking again, and Beth feels herself freeze. 

“You got history,” he says, his voice softer than she’s used to. “You made choices, and I know you well enough to know they were probably the right ones at the time.” 

She breathes out a little, looks back at him, looking at her, and is overwhelmed by the warmth in his look, in his tone, in _him_. It’s enough to make her flush, to feel bad for wanting to push him out, but she doesn’t let herself turn her gaze from him, no matter how much easier it’ll be. 

“Thank you.” 

He just shrugs, and Beth leans back in her seat, watching him carefully. 

“What about you?” 

“Me?” 

“You were married?” 

“Very briefly,” he says with a laugh. “We were very young.” 

“How young?” 

“Eighteen.” 

“Same age as Annie and Greg,” then, briefly, she startles. “You got someone knocked up?” 

He laughs, surprised, “Not yet,” then, with a shrug, “Nah, we were just young. Thought good fucking was the same as a fairytale, forever love or some shit. It wasn’t. We burnt out fast, but we’re cool. She married some big deal business guy in LA, popped out a few kids. She still sends me Christmas cards, all of them around some white, mall Santa.” 

He laughs a little, but it’s affectionate in a way that surprises Beth. She smiles, for real, because she’s happy for him, for them. She knows how hard that friendship is to keep. 

“You and car guy?” Rio says, cutting through her thoughts. She clears her throat, ignores the painful twist in her belly. What will Ruby say? Fuck, what will Annie? She blinks back something wet. 

“Young as well, I guess. We dated in highschool.” 

He snorts at that, and Beth thinks, and then - - fuck it. 

“My mom got really sick, so I left college to look after her, and then Annie got pregnant in highschool, and I couldn’t really go back. To college, I mean. Mom died, Dad bailed. Dean didn’t. Marrying him made sense.” 

Rio considers all this information from his perch against the wall, and a part of her, something tight and desperate and close to the skin wants him so much closer. Something deeper does too. Something in between? Something in between needs him to stay right where he is. 

“I’m sorry about your mom.” 

Beth waves a hand out, an excuse to try and shake _herself_ out. 

“We weren’t close. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately though. I think I understand her more now than I ever did, and that makes me sad. Not because I wish I’d known it then, I just…I wish we’d had a chance to know each other as adults, you know? She saw right through all of this, me and Dean. She didn’t want me to marry him, but she died, so…” 

Rio nods, forehead furrowed, and she gets the impression he knows that all too well. 

“It must seem so quaint to you,” she says with a laugh, something ugly tinging its edges. “Death.” 

Something in the air seems to pause between them, become, suddenly, remarkably, heavier. She could kick herself for saying it, but then, she doesn’t want to. She’s so tired. 

She’s so, so tired. 

“It don’t seem quaint to me at all,” Rio says, and Beth colours a little, even if she doesn’t quite mean it. 

“Sorry.” 

“You don’t got to apologize. Say what you mean.” 

And right, she thinks, looking at him closely. His large, deep eyes a sort of impossible dark. He’s so focused, so intent, so _intense_ , something in her twists. This is what she’s worried about though, isn’t it? What’s chewed up her thoughts? What’s stopped - - this. 

“You’ve killed people,” she says, and she’s proud of the way she doesn’t so much as stutter. 

He nods at her, and suddenly she’s at a loss of what to say next. He waits, he does, but nothing comes out, and finally Beth looks away, and Rio’s voice, low and steady, thrumming, meets her ears. 

“It’s the business. I made my peace with it a long time ago. The rules of this jungle say kill or be killed, like any other, it’s just literal in our line of work.” 

The _our_ sticks out to her, meets her, and prods at something deep within that knows – knows – Beth clenches her eyes shut. 

“I don’t take it lightly, Elizabeth. You might not get that yet, but you will.”

Beth gasps, twisting to meet his gaze again. 

“I could never - - ”

“You tried to kill me, didn’t you?” 

And of course she did, that night back in her dining room, the three of them, her and Rio and Dean, in this odd little dance. The feelings are suddenly overwhelming, and she wants to cry again, wants to cover her face, shield herself, _protect_ herself. She can hear Rio sigh from somewhere behind her. 

“Elizabeth,” he says, but she doesn’t look back up, can’t bring herself to, the weight of the night, of the day, of the last fitful few weeks, bearing down on her with an unbelievable pressure, and she’s not sure how long she sits there, but when she looks back up, he’s gone.


	8. Chapter 8

“Well, if no one else is gonna say it, I will,” V says, taking a step back to look at Beth properly. “Girl, you look _good_.”

It’s enough for a blush to find the high points of Beth’s cheeks, enough for her to spin on the spot, first back towards her bed where Ruby and Annie sit, coffee mugs in hand, eyebrows raised and lips pursed in a sort of unanimous agreement, and then back to the mirror. It’s with a bubble of almost hysterical laughter that she thinks they all might be right.

They’d veto’ed the red dress in the end – the one with the plunging neckline and the slit to upper thigh (“Only to save it for a better occasion,” V had said with a wink, putting it pointedly back into Beth’s closet) – for something a little simpler. It’s black, plain, figure-hugging. The hem stops just below her knee, and it would almost be modest if it wasn’t for the low sweetheart neckline that cups her breasts and exposes miles of her pale cleavage. 

“Really?” Beth says now instead. “I feel like it just makes it really obvious how long it’s been since this part of me-“ she gestures to said miles of pale cleavage, “has seen _any_ sun.”

V just shrugs, leaning down to hug at the hem of Beth’s dress, making it sit a little smoother (a little tighter) against her. 

“It’ll just make dudes think of how much time you spend indoors, probably in somebody’s bed.” 

Over V’s shoulder, Beth can see Ruby roll her eyes, but Annie looks positively gleeful. 

“And I want them to think that?” Beth asks tentatively, and V scrunches up her nose, rocks her head back and forward. 

“I mean, it’s a line, right? You want them to think about it. Hell, you even want them to think the option of it is there for _them_ , right? But you also don’t want them to think that’s what you’re there for. You ain’t there to pick up, you ain’t a gold digger,” V pauses then, grins, “Or a grave digger. A lot of these guys are pretty old. You’re just a classy lady, easy on the eye, doin’ her job. That’s it.” 

“Right,” Beth says, leaning over towards her dresser. She pulls out a red lipstick, but V pinches it from her grasp. 

“You hear anything I just said?” 

She swaps it for a softer one – something peachy and muted. Passing it to Beth, V leans bodily against the dresser, watching as the other woman puts it on. 

It’s today after all. What they’ve spent the last two weeks preparing for, and Beth hates to say it, but she thinks she’d feel better about it if she’d seen Rio at all in that time. But she hasn’t. It’s been nada, nothing, not a late-night appearance in her kitchen, or a three-word text, or a lift to the warehouse. In Annie’s words, he’s ghosting her _hard_. And sure, it’s not the first time he’s fallen off the face of the earth – they are, after all, technically shutdown, and how long did she go without seeing him then? Months? – but he’d seen her kick Dean out, he’d even - - Beth sucks in a breath. 

Then, a hand at her back. She fumbles, looking up, expecting V, but it’s Ruby, already dressed in a black dress of her own, make-up done, and hair perfectly blown out. 

“You okay?” Ruby asks, and Beth nods, painting on a grin. 

“Yeah, just a little nervous.” 

“Don’t be,” V says. “You guys got this.”

And maybe they do. The last two weeks have seen V take them through the fundamentals of this business in a way they never got with money laundering. How they make them, how they sell them, how these art auctions _work_. Plus they won’t be alone. They haven’t met Cyrus yet, but V promises them that he knows his stuff and that he’ll be doing most of the talking. 

(“At least until we can get rid of him.” 

“Get rid of him,” Annie had asked, wide-eyed, and V had just shrugged, locking up the storage unit with the fake artwork behind them. 

“He’s trouble, that’s all. This is his world. It’s where he comes from, I mean, so he comes with contacts and a foothold, which is useful, but means he’s doing this with us because he’s either greedy or he’s desperate, and those things don’t exactly breed loyalty.”)

Of course, they are meeting him today. They are, because today is the day they try this thing on for real. Today’s their first art auction – a silent, mid-to-low tier showing, just to see if it – if _they_ – work. 

V’s phone buzzes on top of Beth’s dresser, and even from here Beth can see Rio’s name flash across the screen. Her stomach lurches, and they all must see it, she thinks, because Ruby’s hand finds her back again, and V gives her a careful look as she answers. 

There’s only a few short, clipped words on V’s end before she’s hanging up, holding her palms up, and saying, “You ready, ladies?” and Beth wonders if they ever will be.

*

They end up at a building Beth hasn’t seen before – something a few stories high, marginally modern, but otherwise rather innocuous. A businessman stands out front, talking quickly on his cell, a cigarette in hand. He doesn’t even blink when they pull up out front and get out of the car.

“What is this place?” Annie asks, hands buried in the pockets of her leather jacket. The weather is easing into spring, but there’s still a nip to the air and Beth’s glad she brought her coat, tugging it on as she follows the others into the building. 

“Nowhere special. We’re borrowing it for the week, that’s all.” 

Annie nods, but looks back to Ruby and Beth, visibly nervous. They’re used to the warehouse, to various drop-offs and pick-ups in parks or diners or stranger’s backyards, but this is something different. If they didn’t know any better, it could almost be legitimate. 

V leads them down the hallway, up two floors in the elevator and down towards the back of the building, towards an office marked as a dental surgery for a Dr. Paul Monroe. 

“Really?” Ruby says, and V just turns around, grins, and pushes through. 

It’s a pretty small place and, by all appearances, actually _is_ a dental surgery. There’s a neat little waiting room in the front, with uncomfortable looking chairs and a basket of children’s toys propped in the corner, out-of-date magazines stacked on a side table, and the distinct smell of brassy chemicals, thick enough to clog the pores. And there’s a reception desk – one that V makes confident strides before. A girl sits behind the desk, pretty and young, dressed neatly in a high-waisted skirt and plain blouse, her blonde hair tossed back over her shoulder, and Beth has a vague flash of recognition. 

“Yo, she looks like child bride,” Annie whispers at her side, and Beth blinks back, because _yeah_ , she really does. The thought startles her all the same, enough that she has to push any thought of Dean out of her head. 

“Here for the 2 o’clock?” the girl asks, and V shakes her head. 

“2.40.” 

Beth’s forehead furrows, glancing back to the clock in the waiting room which clearly reads 11.37am. She looks back at V and the receptionist, only to pause. _It’s a code_ , she realises, as the receptionist slides up gracefully from her seat and disappears into the offices behind her. They’re waiting for a few minutes before V groans, doing a quick lap of the room before finding the side door to the office and banging hard on it. 

It doesn’t take long then for it to spring open and for Bullet to step out to meet them, eyebrow piercings, neck tatts and all. 

“What?” 

“We were summoned,” she says irritably, gesturing widely towards the room and then back to where Beth, Ruby and Annie still stand by the vacant receptionist counter. 

Bullet briefly looks up at them, face blank as usual. He opens his mouth to respond, only to close it when a voice sounds behind him. 

“Let ‘em in.” 

Beth would know it anywhere. Of course she would, but she’s still surprised at the hot flush it sends through her, from the tip of her nose to the bones of her toes. She slips her hands inside the folds of her coat and smooths out her dress, only dropping them out when she feels Ruby squeeze her arm. 

She’d told them everything. Two weeks ago, back when it happened – when she’d fought with Dean and kicked him out, and Rio, appearing like an omen or a blessing or a curse, or maybe some fraught combination of the three (after all, hasn’t he always been? Since that very day he showed up in her kitchen, a death wish and a perfect promise all at once?), defending her, telling her he’d been married, telling her he’d killed people, telling her she _could_. They hadn’t had anything to say to that. Not even Annie. 

“Well?” V says now, not to them, but to Bullet, who just rolls his eyes, holding the door open enough that she can duck below his arm and step through. 

“You okay?” Ruby whispers to her again. “We don’t have to do this, you know?” 

“We don’t?” Annie says with a dash of hysterical laughter. “What are you talking about?” 

But Ruby just holds up her hand to Annie, her eyes still fixed on Beth. 

“We can figure it out. We always do.” 

And Beth thinks they probably would figure it out, but still, the job is the job, and it’s not what’s making her feel like this. 

“I’m fine. Let’s do this.”

*

Inside the office is about what Beth would expect – a small room with walls peppered with university degrees and doctorates, and heavy-looking bookcases holding heavy looking books. There’s a dental mould on the desk, a tall, leather chair behind a rosewood desk, and the vague smell of ash which Beth mostly associates with cigarettes.

There are only three other people in the room aside from them and Bullet – the man Beth’s come to recognise as Rio’s business offsider, another she vaguely recognises, and then, there, in black slacks, a black shirt, buttoned to the neck, and looking every bit as handsome as she remembers, is Rio. 

“Ladies,” he says, tilting his head. He’d obviously been deep in conversation with the other two men, and Beth resists the urge to shift her weight in discomfort. He immediately turns back to the two men. 

“You want to finish?” Rio directs to the man she only kind-of recognises. The guy is tall – taller than Rio, with sloping shoulders and a head-full of grey hair. He’s lean in his perfectly tailored suit, his shoes polished to reflect the light from the ceiling in near perfect little circles. 

The man fumbles.

“It’s just I thought we were starting low tier. Something smaller, you know.” 

“This is small,” Rio replies, and Beth suddenly remembers where she’s seen this man before. The day she forced her way into the tower at the warehouse. The dapper man he’d been speaking with that day, right before Beth and Rio fought, before his wound pulled, the one she’d stitched up. 

“Besides,” Rio adds. “You’ve got help.” 

It’s only then that he acknowledges the four women, tilting his head in their direction. He looks at Beth, and her heart stops, but his gaze defers so quickly, she half thinks she imagined it. 

The man looks back at Rio, an eyebrow raised, lets out a huffing little breath. 

“Excuse me?” 

“We talked about this, Cyrus. The ladies’ are heading in with you. Elizabeth and Ruby are your back-up there. They work for you today. V’s been talkin’ to them, getting’ them up to speed. They’ll back you up.” 

The man – Cyrus – looks back at Beth and Ruby again, scoffs, turns away to face the wall, a hand against his forehead, and V uses it as her chance to step in. 

“We good?” she asks, and Rio looks at her with an expression Beth doesn’t recognise. Both of them stand there, staring for a minute, two, a conversation inaudible, but a conversation none the less. Beth’s not sure what they settle on, nor can she quite stop the twist of something (jealousy? No, god) in her gut at their familiarity. 

After a minute, Rio nods, and V does too, turning to face Beth and Ruby. With an easy hand, she gestures for them to take off their coats, and Ruby does, quickly and easily, and Beth does too, if not quite so quickly, or quite so easily. 

“They’re dressed the part,” V says, dropping their coats over her bent arm. “And we’ve talked so much about the works this week there ain’t no way they’ll drop the ball. Little Marks and me will be in the car outside throughout the auction. We have a plan of withdrawal, but hand to God, I don’t think we’ll need it. You’ll have access to the security feed at the hotel, we got that sorted too, so you can watch it from your office.” 

And this time, she’s sure she feels it. The heat in Rio’s stare, even if it’s only for a second before he moves on. 

“Good. Cyrus will be goin’ in with you. All you need to do is stay at the booth, talk to the customers. Hell, you’re used to shoppin’. Now you’re just the other side of that transaction.” 

“For counterfeit product,” Beth says, not quite able to help herself, and Rio blinks back at her, his expression heavy. He arches an eyebrow. 

“That’s the business, Elizabeth. You should know that by now.” 

He gestures with a tilt of his head back to the door, and then V’s hand is at her arm, leading her, Ruby and Annie out – out of the office, of the waiting room, of the floor, of the building. Out towards the car, and to the job.

*

Despite all the preparation, all the _education_ , it isn’t exactly what she was expecting. The booth is not a booth, like at a school fair or one of the fan conventions Kenny’s dragged her to before, or even the car shows that Dean used to frequent. For starters, it’s at the function room in a luxury hotel, lush and fancy in a way that makes Beth glad for the outfit and V’s careful hand in styling them, and second of all, there’s not actually a _booth_ at all, more of a – a station, she supposes. They stand around where their artwork is hung on the walls prior to the auction, smiling, and helping, and pretending to know a thing about aging canvases and the pigments in paint.

Ruby’s been talking to a guy for the better part of ten minutes now, and Beth finds her gaze wandering. The crowd is not exactly mixed – most are older, white, practically dripping in wealth. Beth smooths out her dress, and then, remembering what V said, tries to smile invitingly over the crowd. Stupid. She doesn’t think it really works. Of all the things Beth exudes, she doesn’t think invitation is one of them. She’s always felt awkward at these things, unsure of herself, or sure of herself in ways that don’t really invite much good in these situations. She shakes her head, clears her throat, and almost misses the man appearing at his side until he says, “It’s a beautiful work.” 

“What?” she asks, before she can help herself, and the man grins, bemused, back. 

“I said it’s a beautiful work.” 

He’s handsome, probably in his fifties, with a well-tailored suit and a neat quiff of salt and pepper hair. He looks good, smells good – expensive – and he’s standing in front of one of their paintings, and Beth fumbles for the lies in her head. 

“Well, you’d hope so,” she says. “It _is_ a Sigmar Polke.” 

“Sigmar Polke?” the man asks, arching an eyebrow, and Beth nods, cursing herself for her emphasis on the name. 

“He’s a German artist – he paints, photographs. Passed away a few years ago, which just about breaks my heart. He really had such vision.” 

The man watches her for a second, and Beth can feel herself start to fidget under the intensity of his stare, but refuses to break their eye contact. Can’t, of course she can’t. 

“Are you a fan?” she asks, and the man hums, rocking his head back and forward. 

“I prefer American artwork, if I’m honest, but my business partners tell me I should be investing in more European work. If I’m sticking to honesty, I thought you’d be European yourself.”

Beth blinks, surprised enough she could almost laugh, but stops herself, opting to feign innocence instead. 

“You did?”

“I did. Something about your skin, I suppose, and the whole look of you. I’m Roger.” 

And _oh_ , Beth thinks, looking at him, feeling herself change gears. This she can do. She pushes a hip out, ever so slightly. 

“Grace,” she says, holding out a hand, which he shakes with a laugh, turning his attention back to the painting. 

“What do you think of it?” he asks, and Beth looks at him, surprised all over again.

“What do I think of it?”

“Well, aren’t you the expert?” 

“Sure,” she replies, trying to stifle the nervousness in her laugh. “I suppose I am.” 

At his weighted look, Beth clears her throat. 

“Honestly, I’m not used to being asked. Most of the buyers prefer to talk to Cyrus. I used to think it was an age thing, but then I’m not so young anymore. Maybe you asking is a sign I’m over that particular hump.” 

Roger laughs, not unkindly, leaning slightly closer. 

“Not at all. You’re what? Fresh out of highschool?” 

“Oh, please.” 

“Alright, alright,” he holds up his hands. “Maybe it is an age thing. I’m not sure I’d want your opinion on the piece if you _were_ fresh out of highschool. 

“Isn’t that a little ageist?” 

“Would you want an 18-year-old’s opinion on a $90,000 painting?” 

Beth arches an eyebrow. 

“So you do know Polke?” 

Roger laughs again at that, lyrical this time, if not a little embarrassed. A few people slow as they walk passed them, and Beth tilts her head, just enough to acknowledge (“Don’t forget about anyone,” V had told her. “A customer is a customer, no matter what.”) 

“I know what he’s worth,” Roger adds. “I can’t say it was the reason I came over, but maybe you’ll have me convinced.” 

“Maybe I will,” she says, thinking about V’s words again, only this time just from that morning – the chance of… She tilts her head down, looking up at him through the fan of her lashes, and _yeah_ , she thinks, watching the way his eyes trace her neck down, down, down. She’s got him.

*

Cyrus practically bounds into the car, directing them to _go, go, go_ , his breathing at a near hysterical pitch as though he can’t believe they got away with it, as they pull out of the carpark and head to the meeting point. Half a million dollars. Just like that, Beth thinks breathlessly, smiling wide, just like that. First time working like a charm. After Roger, it had been easy to do the others. A casual flirt, a promise to meet at the bar after the auction, easily broken and easily explained away (“Cy says we’ve got to go.” She can pout her way through that at least), and then all those men, bidding eagerly, making eye contact with her or Ruby or both across the fray of well-dressed, high-earning brokers.

There’s a thrill she hasn’t felt since all those months ago, the first time they really knew they were washing the cash _right_ , and she can barely hide her grin. Ruby beside her isn’t much better, grin spread from ear to ear as they turn the corner not to the morning’s office, but for a bar downtown. 

“I talked old V here into a done job celebration the Hills-Marks-Boland style,” Annie says, hanging her torso off the front seat, and it’s all Beth can do not to laugh. 

“Uh, this doesn’t look like a _Real Housewives_ marathon, Thai takeout, and a few bottles of wine,” Ruby says, but her grin hasn’t faltered, and V laughs from the drivers’ seat. 

“I thought you said you guys knew how to have fun.” 

“That _is_ fun.” 

Cyrus makes a huffing noise from the back seat, but they basically ignore it, piling out of the car as soon as they park and stumbling (tragically sober) towards the bar. The place is full of people, bustling about, drinking, jeering over pool. It smells like cheap beer and cheaper perfume, and Beth doesn’t think she’s been to a place like this since her brief stint in college, but none of it seems to matter, not now, not when they’ve _crushed_ this, and she can’t help the way her smile grows seeing Rio across the bar, leaning back with a scotch and a grin as he swaps stories with Bullet. 

“Drinks!” V calls, gesturing for the girls to settle as she ducks to the bar to order a round, and Beth immediately drops to one of the bar stools, grinning as Ruby tells her and Annie about one guy who was a total, blatant flirt, the wedding rings on both of them be damned. 

“Was he cute though? I bet he was cute,” Annie says, and Ruby grins, rolls her eyes a little in a way that totally means he was, and Beth can’t quite stop herself from laughing. It’s all it really takes for Rio to sidle over, tilt his drink to them, and say, “Well done, ladies.” 

“We did ya proud,” Annie says. “Well, they did. I kind of did? From the car? I mean, I helped.” 

“You definitely helped,” Beth replies, as V returns with a strange handful of cocktails, passing them out. 

“A toast,” V says, loud over the scrum of the crowd. “To a job well done.” 

“To a job well done,” Annie yells, and Ruby and Beth raise their glasses too. She thinks they’ve lost Cyrus somewhere, among the crowd, but Bullet raises his glass and, after a minute, Rio does too. 

They lean back, take a drink, and then Rio finishes his, quick as anything, rising back up to his feet. 

“Enjoy the celebrations,” he says, and V gives him a disparaging look over their heads. 

“Stay for a drink,” she replies, and he waves his empty glass at her. 

“I did.” 

“Come on, it’s a celebration. It _works_ , Rio. This shit _works_.”

“We gotta work out a few kinks,” Rio says with a shrug. “But yeah, it worked.” 

“Kinks?” V asks, and Rio shrugs again, looking out across the bar at the swell of people. He’s quiet for a minute, and all Beth can see is the line of his twisting neck as it looks at anyone but her. 

“I ain’t sure the ladies are the best way in. We might try something else.” 

The silence after that hits like a bullet. All four of them seem to have the air stripped of them. Beth can feel Ruby and Annie staring at each other behind her back, but she can’t take her eyes off Rio, at the way he steadfastly avoids her gaze, at the way V, in front of him, stares back, about as shocked as they are. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” V asks, and Rio shrugs, tossing a couple of hundreds on the counter and telling them to have fun, before he heads straight out for the back door, leaving Bullet behind with them. 

They’re quiet for a minute, two maybe, the only sounds the eruption of chatter from the bar before Annie and Ruby explode to meet it, talking quickly to V about just what the _fuck_ that was, and Beth watches the door, half ignores the girls, then, finally, fuck it. “Sorry, I’m just…I’ve got to…” she waves a hand out to them, and slides off her barstool, following Rio out the door. Vaguely, behind her, she can hear Annie call out, and Ruby tell her to stop, but at the moment, in this second, Beth has a one track mind. 

“Hey!” she calls, wishing she’d grabbed her coat off V when the night air nips at her arms, at her chest, at the back of her neck, but she can’t slow down, can’t go back now. “Hey!” 

She can see the moment Rio hears her, the moment he knows it’s her; the way his back stiffens, and he turns slightly as he pulls his car keys from the pocket of his jacket. 

“Go back inside, yeah?” 

“No,” she says, striding quicker to meet him. Somewhere, a group of girls yell and cheer, a man retches, a car horn sounds. She picks up her step. Rio’s keys are out, he’s beside his car, but he doesn’t move to do a thing about it. 

“I ain’t doin’ this tonight, Elizabeth. Go have a drink with your friends.” 

He turns then, to unlock his car, she thinks, and, no, he can’t - - 

“I don’t - - hey – wait.” 

She reaches for him, grabs his arm, spins him around, and he just gives her that look, the one he’d given her in the warehouse carpark, all those weeks ago, the one before, that look of irritation, and of - - of something else too. 

“What’s wrong with you?” 

“What’s wrong with me?” he asks her, voice lowered, eyebrows raised. 

“Yes, what’s wrong with you. We did well tonight. Everything you asked. We moved your product. That’s what you wanted, right? And now you’re punishing us again? For what?” 

She’s exasperated as she says it, arms out, gesturing widely. She feels off-centre – her stomach in her chest, her heart in her throat, everything is too hot, despite the cool night air, chilling her neck. She can feel herself tighten, swell, fix itself to the spot. If Rio sees it, it does nothing to him, nothing she can see. 

“I ain’t punishin’ you. It wasn’t workin’ for me. So we’ll change it. I been in this business a long time, sweetheart, trust me, I know - -” 

“Bull,” she hisses. “You’re pissed off. At what? Not being in the action? Is that it? Because honestly, Rio, you said it yourself, you couldn’t have moved that stuff, not in there.” 

“I’m not pissed.” 

“Good, because you shouldn’t be. We did -- _I_ did great in there.” 

“You did,” Rio agrees, but he shakes his head, sucks his cheeks in until all Beth can see is the sharp lines of his cheekbones and the broad edge of his jaw. “But you drew too much attention.” 

She reels back, surprised. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It means it’s not working. We’ll try something else.” 

He says it slower this time, like she’s simple, and she thinks if it was anyone else, maybe she’d leave it alone, maybe she’d put up with it, like she did with Dean for so many years, but he’s not Dean, and he’s not anyone else, and he’s - - she blinks. 

“You’re jealous,” she says. “Of what? Me flirting with those guys?” 

Rio doesn’t say anything, but she sees it again – that thing where he clenches, right at the back of his jaw. 

“You are,” she says, feeling something uncurl in her, something satisfied, something _real <_, only to be quickly tampered by the weight of it all. “So wait. Because you don’t like a couple of guys flirting with me, you’re going to tank this whole job? Demote me and Ruby? We’re onto a good thing here, Rio, and I can’t – I _won’t_ let you pull this shit on me, I’ve put up with it for - -” 

And then he’s on her, his lips on hers, his hand tangled in her hair, keeping her close, and his grip is firm, tough, powerful, but his tongue is soft in her mouth, his teeth careful at her lips, and before Beth can think on it, she’s the one to deepen it – to suck his tongue harder, to scratch her nails down his scalp, his neck, until he groans. 

They almost spring apart, too hot, too tense, the string between them suddenly feels pulled unbearably taut, like if Beth lent back any further, it would snap. Her legs feel wobbly, but the rest of her - - the rest of her - -

Rio’s still there, flushed, his gaze unmoving. Slowly, he steps closer, raising a hand towards her. 

“It’s got to be you,” Rio says, his breath hot at her cheek, his palm cupping the back of her neck. “You gotta be the one to close it. I don’t want it any other way. Not with you.” 

“You want me though,” she whispers, her chest heaving against the constraints of her dress, and he laughs, pressing his lips ever so slightly to her temple. 

“More than you know, darlin’”

Beth lets out a shaky breath, leans back to look at him, really look at him – at the softness in him she’s starting to recognise – in his eyes, in his lips, in his forehead, and oh, she thinks, closing the distance between them. 

Oh. 

So they fall back into his car, fumbling to push the backseat down and vaguely she thinks about Annie and Ruby and V in the bar, but she doesn’t care, not when Rio’s so close, not when his hands are so hot, reaching for the back of her dress, pulling down the zipper. 

“You in this dress,” he hisses. “Fuck, you in anything.” 

She shrugs her arms out of it, letting him pull it the rest of the way off, down over her belly, her thighs, lets him lift her arse to slide it off the rest of her, until she’s sitting there, straddling his hips on the folded down seat of his Porsche in only a matching set of bra and panties, black lace, the best she has, and a pair of four inch heels. He’s still fully dressed, and they’re both breathing hard as she leans down to kiss his nose, his lips, his neck, her fingers making nimble work of taking off his shirt, a button at a time. Her fingers find the wound in his stomach, the one she’d stitched up, and when he hisses, she smooths them over it. 

“You know how many times I’ve thought about kissing it better?” she whispers, and it’s kind of lame, so she scrunches up her nose at the thought, but something in him reacts below her – not quite a tremble, but something close, so she wriggles down his body – as much as she can in the tiny space of the car, to press her lips to the puckered scar. 

“Sometimes I don’t know what I did in my life to deserve this,” he whispers, somewhere above her, and Beth leans back, feels his hard cock against the cleft of her arse, and rises up, enough to tug off his belt and his pants beneath them, to pull her panties aside, open up her cunt and sink down onto him. She gasps, breathless suddenly, at the look on his face, staring up at her, and stupid, she thinks – she should’ve grabbed a condom, she should’ve slowed this down, she should’ve – but then he’s leaning up, pushing her bra up from the underwire until the cups are up around her neck, and he’s latching a hot mouth onto her right nipple, fondling her left breast with his other hand, thrusting up into her again and again before dropping his free hand to her clit, and then she’s not thinking of anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [inserts 'it's been 84 years' gif]
> 
> Sorry about the delay in the upload! I had a very busy real life for a few months. Not sure if anyone's still reading this, but I hope you like it. :-)


	9. Chapter 9

There’s this moment, right after he climaxes, after she does, that they just stop. 

He’s still inside of her, she’s still straddling him, a bruise growing on the top of her head from where he’d fucked her into the ceiling of his car, and it should bother her, or embarrass her, or something, but instead they’re just sitting there, staring at each other, stark naked in the back of his nice car, the remnants of his saliva still wet on her breast, hers on his neck, his lips bitten raw, and some mix of the both of them wetting the insides of Beth’s thighs and the join of his hips where she straddles him. 

She’s not sure what breaks the moment – if there’s a noise outside, or a change in the light, or if it’s just that the minute passes, and the heat’s still there, only it’s different now, something sated and warm instead of something hot and untenable, and right, Beth thinks, pushing off him with her wobbly legs, awkwardly covering her breasts as she topples onto the backseat of his car beside him. 

He looks over at her, his gaze as fixed as it ever is, and then he’s curving his leonine body sideways and raising a hand. He palms her cheek gently, before running his fingers down her neck, to the upper curve of her breast, to her hand that covers it. He laughs. 

“I ain’t ever known you to be shy,” Rio says, a hint of mocking in his voice, and Beth groans, rolls her eyes, and ends up thinking, well, fuck it. He’d just been sucking on one of them after all. She releases her breasts – uses her hands instead to rub at her cheeks, her eyes, try to wake herself back up out of this well-fucked state. 

Through the window, she can see the moon – not-quite-full, not-quite-round – a drop of cream in the black coffee sky. She has to resist the urge to lean closer to the window, to look out and see if there’s anyone there in the carpark with them, who might have seen - - who could still see. She can feel herself blush again, the thought sparking strangely inside her, because she doesn’t _want_ that, she’s not - - 

“You okay?” 

She blinks sideways, at where Rio’s watching her, his gaze careful, not giving away anything, and Beth opens her mouth to say she’s _fine_ , but Rio taps his fingers on her chest, and she suddenly realises he hadn’t moved her hands when she had. 

“I can feel it,” he says, tapping at her ribs, just below her breast, at her heart. “Like a jackrabbit.” 

Beth clears her throat, reaches a hand down to pry his fingers off her, but he holds firm, and so she stops, and rests her fingers over his instead. She can feel the callouses, hard and almost scratchy, against the soft skin of her lower chest, rougher than Dean’s ever were, and she wonders how her fingers feel – soft, she knows (an avid moisturiser and sensitive handwash sort of girl since her school days). She wonders if he likes it, or if he doesn’t, or if it makes him think of all the places she hasn’t been, like the roughness of his makes her think of all the places he has. 

“I’m fine,” she says anyway, and Rio holds his gaze for a moment, like he’s thinking of whether to pry or not, but in the end he just nods, and sits up. He jerks up his underwear, his trousers, rifles through the carnage on the floor of the car for his shirt, and tosses her her underwear, her bra, her dress. 

Beth clears her throat again, sits up a little awkwardly, groping for her panties and slipping them on. Her thighs are still sticky, with the remnants of it all, and she feels like getting dressed is just making a bigger mess of her. She’s doing up her bra clasp when she looks over at him, fully dressed, checking his phone. 

“Are _you_ okay?” she asks quietly, and he blinks back at her, and for a brief moment, he looks surprised. 

“I’m good,” he says, almost purrs, but it’s not his usual one, not his usual flirt, something vacant about it, and she can feel something in her chest tighten, tears prickle at the corner of her eyes, and it’s stupid, _she’s_ stupid, to think that this would be anything other than that. 

“Right,” she says aloud. “Good. We’re both good.” 

She puts her dress on as quickly as possible, smoothing her hair down with the palms of her hands before nodding over at him as she fumbles behind her for the door handle. She shoves it open, steps out into the carpark on wobbly legs. Somebody wolf-whistles, and she casts her gaze anxiously over, but it’s no one she knows, and so she starts back towards the bar before a voice sounds, clear and urgent behind her. 

“Elizabeth.” 

She turns back, and Rio’s there, still in his car, the door she’d left through flung open, his long body leaning out of the backseat. He’s just staring at her, and she’s just staring back, and neither of them is saying anything, and she’s not sure how much time passes, whether its minutes or its hours, the space between them pregnant in its silence, until finally, Beth turns back to the bar.

*

They don’t stay for long. Beth stumbles back in, and she must stink of sex, because Ruby and Annie and V just stare at her, before V buys her one last drink, and Ruby gets her in a cab to take the three of them home.

As far as cab rides go, Beth’s sure it must be weirdly tense for Annie and Ruby – enough that Annie spends the bulk of it talking in that anxious, high pitched voice she gets about how great the drinks were at that bar, and really, did they see that cute bartender, he was cute, V was flirting with him, it was hot – but Beth is mostly lost to her own thoughts, pressing her forehead to the window of the cab as they skirt the streets towards her house. 

If she’s honest with herself, she’s not sure what she expected. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about sex with Rio before – lying if she said she hadn’t thought about variations of what _had_ happened (in the car, her on top, his mouth on hers, on her neck, on her breast, the way his teeth had – just so – she coughs a little, ignoring Ruby’s questioning glance), just she doesn’t think she’d ever thought about what would happen afterwards. It’s not like Rio was going to take her out for another drink, or dinner and a movie. Not take her back to his place and fix her breakfast in bed after a night of marathon sex. Her entire relationship with Rio has been fleeting, heated encounters. Why would this be any different? 

Still, the whole thing leaves her cold. 

It’s not long before they’re pulling up at the house, Beth, Ruby and Annie staggering out of the cab and thrusting a few notes back in the direction of the driver. They head up the steps, Beth leading the way to unlock the front door and pile in. 

The second the door clicks shut, Beth’s met with silence. For a second, a beat, two, all Beth can hear is her own breathing, her own thoughts, only then Annie’s opening her mouth, gesturing quickly with her hands. 

“Sooooo,” she says, and Beth blinks, turns to look at her sister, who’s standing there, wide eyed, uncertain, and then Beth just shrugs. 

“Yeah,” she replies. “I mean, what you think happened, happened.” 

It’s quiet again, until Ruby cuts in. 

“Beth, are you sure that’s something you want to say to this one? You’ve experienced her imagination, haven’t you?” 

“Hey!”

“Depraved,” Ruby says with an eye roll, but the hint of a grin beneath it. Beth finds it hard not to match the look. 

“I prefer to think of it as creative.” 

“I mean, sure,” Ruby says. “That _is_ a word you could use for having sex with the magician at your niece’s birthday party and really _using_ his bag of tricks.”

“I knew I was going to regret telling you about that.” 

Beth laughs, but cringes, the memory of it way too stark. She rubs a hand at her forehead, still a little chilled from where she’d had it pressed to the glass of the cab, and the realisation of it is enough to bring her back to the rest of her body – to the places Rio’s mouth had lingered, and to the sticky mess between her legs. 

“I need to have a shower,” she says. “I smell like - - I mean, I smell. Like.” 

The words won’t quite come, and Jesus, she thinks, feeling herself flush, is she a girl? She’s done this before – has four kids to prove it, but this wasn’t that, and it certainly wasn’t Dean. 

“You don’t smell that much really,” Ruby replies gently, leaning back against the wall. “I mean, I get it. When you’re sittin’ in it, you feel it and you notice it, but we can talk before all that, if you want.” 

Beth just shakes her head, because it’s not just the sex, it’s the other thing. She sighs. 

“I mean, I’ve got - - ” Beth gestures vaguely, and Annie and Ruby both give her confused looks. 

“You got what?” Ruby asks, and Beth clears her throat. 

“I mean, he - - I let him –” 

Ruby’s mouth forms a perfect O around the same time that Annie bursts into near hysterical laughter. 

“ _What?_ ” Annie all but screeches. “Oh my god, you are not my sister. Like, some alien has come and laid their eggs in you, and those eggs have hatched into little baby aliens, and those little baby aliens are like, full adolescent right now and having a molly-and-coke-fuelled rave in your _brain_ , because there is no way that my sister, Beth Boland, would let a _gangbanger_ bust a nut in her.” 

“Oh my god, Annie,” Ruby says, shaking her head. She pushes herself off the wall, gesturing vaguely to Beth. “You, go shower, clean yourself up, and you,” Ruby switches gears, looking at Annie, “now have a job to do.” 

Beth nods, heading towards the bathroom. Somewhere behind her, she can hear Annie say _but I want to hear about the sexy stuff_ , but then Ruby’s muffled voice says something and the words stop altogether. 

She runs the shower hot, letting the steam fill the bathroom, clog her senses, clog her pores, before slipping out of her dress, her bra, her panties, for the second time that night. Without thinking, she lowers a hand, feels the sticky, tacky remnants – evidence of what happened, that it wasn’t another silly, spoiled fantasy, that it happened, that Rio was there, that he kissed her, that he fucked her, that his fingers had found _that_ spot – now, in this moment, her fingers do the same, try to mirror the way he’d done it, her smooth fingers instead of his calloused ones, her other hand finding her breast, twisting at her nipple, just like he’d done, and then - - - 

She shivers to an orgasm too quickly, her knees near giving out. She drops enough she has to find her balance against the edge of the tub, and _fuck_ , she thinks, pressing her knees together, clenching, before easing them apart. 

So she’s a cliché, she thinks, getting to her feet, stepping into the shower. That’s all. Maybe she knew that. Suspected it. Lonely Housewife Fucks Neighbourhood Bad Boy. Isn’t that a whole category of porn? Not that she watches porn. Well, not really. It was always a little too aggressive for her, plus she never really had the time. Not between their mom getting sick, and then Annie getting pregnant, and then Dean, and then - - well, the rest is history. 

She scrubs at her arms, at her chest, belly, neck, with the soap and the washcloth, washes her hair, then finally her legs, thighs, her cunt. Tries to ignore the weird sensation of washing him off her, _out_ of her. 

Afterwards, she dries off quickly, throws on a fresh pair of panties, a bra, and then just one of her cotton robes, something the colour of plum skins with a smattering of white lace, and heads back to the living room. 

It’s only Ruby there then, stretched out on the couch with a glass of scotch, Wife Swap re-runs playing on low volume in the background. Beth crosses the room, fixes herself a drink, and gestures back to Ruby for a top-up, who holds out her glass for one. 

And then they settle, both on the couch, both drinking, both with their eyes carefully trained on the TV. Both, Beth thinks coyly, waiting for the other to speak. 

“I’ll fold,” Ruby says, as if reading Beth’s mind. “I’ve only really got the one question anyway.”

Beth turns towards her, nods shortly, sharply, readying herself for a reprimand or a loaded question, but what comes isn’t that at all. 

“Do you regret it?” 

Beth blinks, opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. She thinks of all the uncertainty, fishes around, in the strange cocktail of emotions mixing in the bowl of her guts, but no, she thinks, regret isn’t one of them. 

“No,” she tells Ruby. “I don’t.” 

At her reply, Ruby lets out a shaky breath, smiling kindly, earnestly. 

“Well, that’s good,” she says, and Beth lets out her own shaky breath, one she didn’t know she was holding, and she laughs. 

“Yeah, I mean. It was good. Really good. Mostly. Just after was weird.” 

“What? You mean, in Annie’s _elegant_ words, him _busting a nut in you_ didn’t lighten his mood?” 

Beth groans, covering her face with her hands, and it’s at that moment that the front door flings open again and Annie appears, carrying a plastic bag and looking pleased and then annoyed. 

“You better not be talking about the sexy stuff without me. Ruby, you _promised_.”

“Calm down, Gossip Girl, we haven’t got to the good stuff yet.” 

Annie makes a disbelieving noise, striding into the living room and tossing Beth a little cardboard box marked Levonorgestrel. Beth grimaces. The only reason she even knows the name is from buying it for Annie – The Morning After pill. 

“Just figured it probably wasn’t worth taking any chances,” Ruby says softly, and Beth nods in agreement, popping the pill and downing it with her scotch when another box lands in her lap. 

“Annie!” Beth says, blushing all over again. This one is a box of condoms ( _ribbed, for her pleasure_ ), and then another (this one in _extra large_ ). Ruby gives Annie a look at that, and Annie just laughs. 

“Maybe I was hedging my bets,” Annie says. “Or maybe its wish fulfilment, I don’t know. He just has some real Big Dick Energy, you know?” She promptly pivots her attention back to Beth. “I will need like, graphic detail on that front. Feel free to use visual aids. I know you went to Whole Foods the other day, so we can have a look at what vegetable is appropriately sized. Like, are we talking carrot or cucumber? Banana or an actual eggplant? Enquiring minds want to know.” 

Beth groans, slipping back down on the couch, and Ruby grabs one of the boxes of condoms, turning it over in her hands. 

“I told you just to get the morning after pill.” 

“Yeah, well, I figured there might be repeat performances, and those things add up. Beth hasn’t needed to bag and tag in like, ever, since her entire tragic sexual archives were _Dean_. But Rio’s like, worldly, ya know, plus crazy into Beth, so I figure reacquainting ourselves with our good friend, Rubber Johnny, might not be a bad thing.” 

Beth is pretty sure she must be so red she could be seen from space. The heat in her cheeks enough to power half the city. 

“God, Annie. I don’t need to be _reacquainted_ with anything.”

Annie makes a noise of strong disagreement. 

“Well, seeing as you let gangfriend inside you in _every_ sense of the word, I’d have to disagree.” 

Annie pauses then, makes a face.

“Oh my god, am I the responsible one now? Do I have to start wearing beige sweaters and crafting?” 

Beth rolls her eyes, has another drink, and watches as Annie spots it and ducks over to the bar to get herself one too. Beth is suddenly very, very glad she’d gotten Dean to take the kids for the night instead of hiring a babysitter like she’d originally planned. She’s not sure she could’ve faced Emma crawling into bed with her tonight. 

“Soooo,” Ruby drawls, looking back at Beth, and right, Beth thinks. _One question, my ass_. 

But still.

She tells them all of it.

*

The second auction isn’t scheduled for another two weeks.

They wanted time, V had told them, to breathe, to settle, to make sure there was no fall out in the tail end of the buyers picking up the works, and, of course, to make sure that the money cleared. 

(“We mostly deal in wire transfers in this field,” V had told them during their meetings before the auction. “The electronic paper trail makes buyers feel safer, but we’ve got our own means of covering it up, you feel me?”)

And it would be fine, Beth thinks, waking up the next morning, if she had anything in her days to keep her mind _off_ Rio. Dean had taken the kids for the whole week in the end – he’d planned a camping trip with his brother and his brother’s kids months ago apparently – a fact Beth finds pretty implausible, but still, the thought of the quiet house had been appealing before, well. 

She sighs, climbing out of bed. Ruby and Annie had both gone home last night, and both have pretty busy weeks between work and kids. They still haven’t been paid by Rio after all, not for the factory work, and not for the previous night. V had covered her share by buying the clothes, the cocktails, anything they’d needed before and after the job, but that had felt more like her shout than it had been an acknowledgement of their efforts. 

Still, it’s not like Beth’s got nothing to do. 

So she writes a chore list for the week – clean out the shed and the treehouse (she’s not convinced some of Boomer’s blood isn’t still up in that thing), tidy the garage, finish boxing up Dean’s things, organise the kids room. She thinks the dishwasher might need a service, and Kenny’s toes are really pushing the tops of his sneakers, plus the car needs an oil change – but those will have to wait until after they get paid. 

She makes a mental note to leave Dean’s things until she’s a few drinks in, and instead gets changed into a pair of old leggings and a tank top and gets to work cleaning the shed and the treehouse. It takes her most of the day – stopping only for a bite of leftover mac and cheese for lunch – and it’s almost six before she’s finished. So then she has a drink, two, before she ends up hovering over the dishwasher. One of the wheels at the back is loose, and she crouches forwards, fiddling with it when there’s a cough behind her. 

Slamming her head on the top of the dishwasher in fright, she swears, spinning around to find Rio standing behind her, dressed in a pair of tight black jeans, a t-shirt – white (is this the first time she’s seen him in something light?), with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. 

He looks good. 

He always looks good. 

Beth has her hair tied up and no make-up on and she’s pretty sure there’s a smear of dirt on her cheek, and she does…not look good. To put it lightly. She can feel herself starting to blush, and then she thinks, _fuck it_. She turns back to the dishwasher. 

“What’s up?” she asks, and she can almost feel Rio’s bemused stare burning a hole through her back. 

“What’s up?” he echoes, well-humoured and Beth hums, leaning back into the dishwasher. She’s got almost her whole torso in the thing when she hears him drop the bag and crouch down beside her. “What are you doing?” 

“Fixing the dishwasher,” Beth says, grunting a little as she fiddles with one of the wheels. Her arms aren’t quite long enough, and the thought has barely surfaced before Rio’s hand joins hers, slotting the wheel perfectly, immediately into place. 

Beth huffs, leaning back, Rio coming out too. 

“I could’ve done it myself.”

“You could have,” he agrees, standing back up. He grabs the duffel bag, unzips it to show her notes on notes of cash. Beth blinks in surprise, even though it shouldn’t be one. 

“Your cut. Yours and your girls.”

Beth leans forwards, grabs the bag. It’s ridiculously heavy, and feels more like the weight of the money they used to wash for him than their cut of anything. 

“How much is in here?” she asks curiously, starting to count, and Rio shrugs, leaning back against her kitchen island. 

“200 G” 

Beth startles, looking up at him. 

“That’s too much.” 

Rio shrugs again, looks outside through the window, at what, Beth’s not sure. She’s not sure she cares. 

“It’s not. Not for the three of you. I took my money back during the shutdown, remember?” he says it like she could forget. “So it’s that. It’s the payment for the van job, then the warehouse work, and then the work you’ve been doing with V to get ready, and then yesterday’s job. It’s what you’re owed.” 

Beth lets loose a wobbly breath, dropping the bag to the counter and pushing her hand into the bag, feeling how the stacks of cash weigh in her hands. 

“I thought us snitching on you took at least two of those jobs out of the equation.” 

She regrets it as soon as she says it – half expecting Rio to sour, to agree, to take it away, but he just shrugs again, his gaze still out the window. 

“Nah, I don’t play like that. You get paid when you do a job. You did a job. A few jobs.” 

Beth pauses, heart in her throat as she watches him studiously avoid her gaze. She thinks about the shoes Kenny needs. She thinks about Ruby, and Annie, but mostly she thinks of how that neck, turned away from her now, had tasted the night before, and she thinks - - oh. 

Oh.

The feeling bubbles up quickly, something furious and red-hot, and fifteen minutes ago, she’d been exhausted. Fifteen minutes ago, she was planning on another couple of drinks, re-runs of whatever home makeover show was playing on cable, and falling asleep. Fifteen minutes ago, Rio wasn’t in front of her, offering her money after a half hour fucking in his car the night before. 

“I am not a whore.” 

And that gets his attention at least – Rio’s head whips around to meet her. 

“Excuse me?” 

“I am not a whore,” Beth repeats. She thrusts the bag back at him. “You don’t pay me for - - or, hell, you don’t pay me _after_ sex. I don’t know how you usually do this, but that is _not_ something you do with me.” 

 

Rio briefly looks incapable of moving, his forehead furrowed, his eyes focused, and then he’s ripping the bag from her hands and tossing it back onto the kitchen island like it weighs nothing at all. 

“You think I need that? You think this is how I go about that business? Fucking and paying 200 G for what? To get women? To get _you_?” he laughs, low, little more than a growl. “Baby, if you think I couldn’t have had you any way I wanted you from the moment we met, you’re out of your mind.” 

Beth bristles, righteous in her fury. She pushes up off the counter, striding closer towards him, getting into his space for a change. 

“Right, of course, because we’re all just pieces for you to move around, right? This whole game is yours. You're the - - ” she fumbles for the word – what would Annie say? “You’re the _dungeon master_ , and we’re all just pawns and - - and knights, and _whatever_ , and you can just do whatever you want with any one of us, and pay us off when it’s over.” 

Rio reels back in surprise. 

“What?” and then suddenly he’s pushed off the island, has closed the distance between them – is so close to her she can feel the heat radiating off his body, feel his breath, against her cheek. “What’s over, Elizabeth?”

And her chest is still heaving with everything, with all these heady thoughts, tumbling out of her, with the weight of this moment, of the last time it was over ( _what you and me had is over_ ), of last _night_ , and the weirdness afterwards, his quietness, of this bag of cash, sitting on her kitchen island, and fuck it, she thinks. Maybe nothing will ever be over between them. 

She surges forwards, grabbing his face as she presses their lips together in an unforgiving kiss. He responds immediately, like she knew he would, fisting her hair and pressing her back into the kitchen island, hard enough to hurt, hard enough she knows there’ll be a bruise like a strap across her back in the morning. He palms at her breast, and then makes quick work yanking her leggings and panties down in one fell swoop, then his pants, and she can feel his cock, already hard, pressing up against her hip. She drops a hand, strokes it a few times, and then gasps when Rio drops his hand to finger her roughly. 

He lets go of her hair, moving a hand down to palm at her breast, tug at her tank, pushing it up just enough to expose one breast and drag a calloused thumb against her already pebbled nipple. He bites her neck, and she raises a hand up below his shirt to scratch hard down his chest, enough to hear him hiss into her skin, and fuck, Beth thinks, it shouldn’t be this good. 

She can feel him start to line himself up, and she’s so wet, impossibly, frustratingly so, and then she thinks of Annie’s words from the night before, thinks of morning after pills and _four children_ and just - - dammit. 

She shoves him back, and he surges forwards again, pushing her harder into the kitchen island, and – 

“No, stop,” she hisses, and Rio groans into her neck, hand still on his cock. She shoves him again, softer this time, and he steps back, watching her hungrily as she pulls her shirt back down over her breast and kicks off her leggings and panties. “We just - - look, if we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.” 

With that, she hurries across to the living room, feeling, more than seeing Rio a few steps behind her. She hears him kick off his own pants around the same time she finds the box of ribbed condoms and tears the packet open with her teeth. When Rio sees, he laughs a little, head tilted, and Beth glances back at him and feels herself _drip_. He’s standing in the arch of the living room, shirt still on, but otherwise naked, his cock – clear now, in the light of the early evening – _is_ big, although perhaps not extra large, and about as nice looking as a cock can look. But more than that, Rio looks like Rio – focused and driven, and his heated stare is hotter than she’s ever seen it, and it’s fixed on her like there’s nothing else on the planet, let alone in this room. 

“We need to – “ she starts, but finds the words won’t come, and then he’s prowling towards her, all leonine stealth, flipping her onto her back on the couch and snaking up her body until his head’s between her legs and his tongue is so deep inside her, she’s pretty sure she can see through space and time. Beth gasps, hard, dropping the box of condoms, reaching down to fist his hair, but there’s not enough of it, so she reaches down further to grab at his shirt, pulling it up, pulling it off him, but not enough, not quite, because he won’t move his hands off her thighs, spreading her out, spreading her open as he eats her out, licking out from her cunt, up to her clit, rough as his fingers had been, rougher, and Beth’s coming before she can stop herself, lights flashing into her line of vision as the heat of Rio’s body pulls back. 

She can hear him rifling with the cardboard box, the tear of the condom wrapper, and then he’s on her again, pushing into her with one easy thrust, and Beth gasps again, feeling herself writhe up the couch, hips lurching forwards, trying to give him a better angle as he thrusts into her. On top of her like this, she feels like she can’t breathe in the best possible way – her entire world, in these brief moments – are just for him, just for his smells, and his touch, and the look, and the sounds, and the way his mouth finds hers again, the way it nips, the way it penetrates, the way his fingers find her clit again, the way he gets her off again, effortlessly, before coming himself and collapsing on top of her, a sweaty, breathless mess. 

It takes her a minute to even realise what’s happened. More than that, it takes her a moment to realise what they’re doing _now_ , her fingers tracing down his skull, his neck, his shoulders, his forehead pressed into her clavicle, his mouth open, panting at her (still mostly covered) breast, his cock still deep inside her. She stutters, shifts back, and at the movement, he pushes off her, slides out and stands up, pulling off the condom, tying it off and throwing it in the bin by the door. He looks at his underwear and his pants on the floor, and Beth sits up a little better. She can see him, circle the kitchen, backwards and forwards, unsure what to do with himself, and _oh_ , Beth thinks. 

Oh. 

“Rio,” she says, sliding up off the couch, and Rio looks back at her, and she thinks maybe he’s never looked younger. 

“Let’s go to bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this ended up being basically an exclusively sexy chapter, haha. Expect a lot more feelings in Chapter 10 (!)


	10. Chapter 10

She’s not sure what time it is. 

Hell, a part of her isn’t sure what day it is. Well, she is, he hadn’t fucked her _that_ well (he definitely had), but after the couch, after she’d pulled him to bed, they’d done it again, slower this time, with his hand in her hair and his eyes on hers, their orgasms coming slower, but somehow better, and he’d collapsed beside her afterwards, breathing wetly at her neck, his fingers still wound in her hair. 

And then they’d slept. 

Or Rio had, at least. Beth had for a while, but she’s been up now for at least an hour, watching the morning light guide its way into her bedroom, peeling below the curtains to glow across his silhouette. She can’t stop herself from touching him. From tugging the sheet just a little further down his chest so she can see the lean lines of him clearly, the hard ones that his muscles make, and then the surprisingly soft ones – his lips, his dip at his waist, the blanket of his eyelashes, spread against his upper cheeks. 

She wants to touch all of him. Wonders if she could. If she could thumb those lips, rake her nails down his abs, curl her fingers around his cock, and then she has to remind herself, almost dreamily, that she’s already done all of that. That it’s not a fantasy anymore, and she’s not entirely sure what that means. 

Pulling the sheet up, she hooks it under her arms, covering her chest, and twists onto her side. She should get up. She should get changed. She should start her day. She should - - 

“Take a picture,” Rio breathes, and when she peels her eyes from his chest back to his face it’s to him, watching her lazily, lips gently parted. 

“They do last longer,” she quips softly (badly), because there’s a part of her that wants to, if nothing else but to see the look on Annie and Ruby’s faces. “Who’d have thought afterglow Rio would be so full of dad jokes?” 

He breathes out a laugh at that, rolling onto his side to face her. His eyes seem to dart over her face, her body, as if taking her in, slowing at her lips, at the line of her pale neck. 

“You’re almost the same color as the sheets,” he says with a grin, and Beth looks down, at where her pale skin slips beneath the white sheet. He reaches over, tugs it down her chest a little as if to prove his point. Her hands slow it, stop him from tugging it the whole way down. 

“We can’t all be so blessed,” she says, rolling her eyes and moving to turn onto her back, only Rio’s hand grips her waist, keeping her firmly where she is. 

“You’re blessed in different ways.” 

He cups her breast, grins again, and leans in to kiss her, biting her lip hard enough she’s sure it’ll swell (then, that might have been his point too). She can’t help herself melting into the kiss, her arms releasing the sheets and curling around his neck, and then, quick as anything, he’s pulling the sheet the whole way off, kicking it down and off the end of the bed, leaving them both exposed to the cool Detroit air. She can already feel her nipples pebbling, but then Rio’s there, pushing one of his bronze leg between her pale ones, thigh high enough to press against the bundle of nerves at her cunt, and she’s gasping as he laughs into her mouth. 

“ _Rio_ ,” she breathes, and he hums hands lowering to clutch at her ass, pulling her towards him as he rocks his hips against hers, cock hardening against her lower belly. “Rio, we need to - -”

She tries to pull his head away, but with his hair so short, there’s nothing to pull with, so she tries an ear, but he shakes her off, latching onto her neck instead, and so she forces a hand to his mouth, and pushes his head away. 

“ _Rio_ ,” she repeats, and he looks at her, his mouth still covered with her hand. “We need to talk.” 

He arches up an eyebrow, rocks his hips against her again, presses his thigh a little harder against her cunt, and no, she thinks, her other hand lowering to pry one of his hands from her ass. 

“Come on,” she says. “You know we do.” 

And that’s enough for him to roll his eyes, groan, and release her entirely, flopping onto his back and clenching his eyes shut. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, grinds them there for a second. His cock is still half hard, standing to attention, and Beth eyes it for a moment before she catches herself, and fixes her gaze. 

They’re both quiet for a minute. The only sounds the traffic outside and the both of them breathing. Without Rio on her, Beth’s quickly cold, and she thinks about getting the sheet again, or a blanket, but oddly thinks that would close him off again, like she thinks her quiet did in the car those two days ago. 

“We need to figure out what this is,” she says instead, and Rio sighs. 

“We know what it is,” he replies, finally dropping his hands away and turning to look at her, his gaze weirdly annoyed, kind of like it was in the café all those weeks ago when he’d asked her why she was trying to sell him botox. 

“Well, please,” she says, getting equally annoyed herself, rolling out a hand. “Enlighten me.” 

“It’s you and me,” he says with a shrug, turning on his side to face her again. “That’s it. Shit’s good between us. We got heat.” 

“We got heat,” she echoes, arching an eyebrow. “What does that even mean?” 

He lowers a hand between them to snake up the inside of her thigh, and she’s wet, they both know it, “Heat,” he repeats, a sultry grin on his face, and she shoves him away until he rolls back to the side. 

“Stop it,” she hisses. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I!” he says, loud, clear, hands up. “I don’t get it either, sweetheart, but you and me, we got somethin’ _good_. You can’t tell me you don’t feel it.” 

“I’m not trying to tell you I don’t feel it. In fact, I’m _literally_ trying to tell you that I _do_ feel it, and I’m trying to work out what that means for us.” 

“Why does everything gotta mean somethin’ with you? Why can’t it just be?” 

“Why? Because I have _four children_ , Rio,” He instantly groans at that, fixing her with a dead-eyed stare, but she just barrels on. “And we _work_ together, and, oh, yes, I’m still technically _married_ , in case you forgot.” 

“Yeah, you do need to get on that,” he agrees, and Beth glowers, ready to open her mouth and tear into him, but then a sound cuts through. 

On her dresser, his phone buzzes, and Rio slides out of bed, still stark naked, and Beth has to stop herself from ogling – only, wait, no she doesn’t, she thinks, letting her eyes drift back to the leonine length of his body, tall and lean in the cut of morning light. It’s only because she’s watching so closely that she can see the stress wind its way into his shoulders, changing the well-fucked languidness of his posture. 

“Everything okay?” she asks, and Rio’s gaze flicks back to her. 

“It will be after I deal with it,” he replies, running off a quick text before dropping his phone back to her dresser. He looks over at her, opens his mouth, as if to say something else, but ends up just huffing out a breath instead. 

She watches him for a moment, two, wonders at how quickly his face has hardened with the promise of the day. Beth leans down the bed, grabs the sheet and covers herself again, shifting awkwardly against the mattress.

“If you want, you can have a shower,” she says, and his phone buzzes again, his gaze hardening all the more, and she feels her chest clenching in a way she can’t quite explain. “I got the pressure adjusted a couple of weeks ago, and I mean, I don’t want to build it up too much, but it’s basically the perfect showering experience. I also have good towels, like, they’re soft, like new, but also I’ve washed them enough that they don’t leave fluff everywhere. It’s really a balance. You need a good fabric softener.” 

She’s rambling, god, she knows she’s rambling, but she can’t explain it. She just doesn’t want this Rio back just yet – not Gangfriend Rio, with his hard lines and his golden gun. She wants the one that’s quiet and soft and just for her like last night, or even the one from a few minutes ago – flirty and hot and, yes, super frustrating. 

“And you don’t have to worry about stepping on action figures or anything like that,” she continues. “We only let the kids use the main bathroom, not our one, so - -”

He laughs then, something husky, and lifts his head enough to look at her. 

“You joinin’ me, darlin’?” 

Beth flushes, and she’s supposed to be orgasmed out. She is! She’s come more in the last two days than she has in the last (more than) two years, but then Rio’s walking over to her, curling a hand around her neck with one hand, and pulling the sheet away from her again with the other, and then his lips are on hers again, and he’s giving her another whole new reason to need to shower.

*

The knock is louder this time.

“Ignore it,” Rio says, his hands on her hips, and Beth opens her mouth to reply only to get a mouthful of shower spray. She splutters, and Rio turns them slightly, so his body blocks the water’s path and she can talk. 

“It could be something important.” 

She’s not sure what or who though. Pretty much everyone important in her life either has a key (Annie, Ruby, Dean), or apparently doesn’t need one to get in (V, Rio – then again, he’s already in here with her). Rio rolls his eyes a little, letting her step out of the shower. He moves, as if to follow, but she shakes her head, reaching for her towel and quickly drying herself before slipping on her panties, a bra, her floral satin robe. 

“Stay,” she says. “Relax. I’ll be back.” 

He nods, stepping back into the shower stream, and she chances a final glimpse of him before she slips out, his eyes shut, the water glistening as it rivers down his hard chest, and right, Beth thinks, moving quicker, that is not something she needs to be thinking about right now. 

Walking quickly out through her bedroom, she beelines for the front door, pulling it open to find Ruby there, hands full of bags, and an instantly relieved look on her face. 

“You okay?” Beth asks. “Did you forget your key?” 

“No hands,” Ruby says, relieving her fingers when Beth takes a couple of the bags off her. She steps in, cases the place quickly, and sighs, shaking her head. The sound of another car pulling up distracts Beth from asking why she’s there, and she looks over Ruby’s shoulder out the front door to where Annie’s getting out of her own car, locking it, dashing up the front steps towards them. 

“We’ve been texting you,” Ruby says, as if reading Beth’s mind. “You didn’t reply to either of us, Beth. You don’t get to do that anymore, not when you’re banging a gangbanger. We had to make sure you were still alive.” 

Ruby holds up one of the plastic bags with three containers inside it. 

“I stress made lasagne last night. I think Stan thinks I’ve robbed somewhere again.” 

“Oooh, gimme.” As if summoned, Annie appears beside her, making grabby hands at the bag before taking it from Ruby. “I love it when you stress cook.” 

She immediately peers into the bag, wide-eyed and excited before starting towards the kitchen. They watch her disappear through the doorway, and Beth and Ruby are left briefly to themselves, staring at each other, the moment weighted. 

“I’m sorry,” Beth says, earnestly. “My phone must have died.”

“Mmhmm,” Ruby hums, giving her an unimpressed look before following Annie towards the kitchen. “We’re going to have to set some new ground rules if this is going to be a thing.” 

Beth rolls her eyes, but tilts her head in acknowledgement. She can’t really argue – she knows she’d be enforcing the same if the shoe was on the other foot, but still. She moves to follow both of them, only Annie has reappeared in the doorway in front of them, her forehead furrowed and her eyes zeroed in on Beth. 

“What?” Beth blinks.

“You leave the shower running?” 

And she can feel it, how quickly the blush burns her cheeks. 

“He’s _here_?” Ruby stage whispers, and Annie cackles, leaning over to punch Beth’s arm. 

“Look at you! God, selling fake art, screwing a crime boss, I’ve asked you before, but I’m going to ask you again, when did you get so cool?” 

Beth groans, burying her face in her hands, and she hears it, the shower flick off, and _god no_ , she thinks. The last thing she needs is Rio sauntering out here in a towel, or, worse, stark naked. She’d never hear the end of it. 

“Kitchen,” Beth hisses. “Now.” 

And Annie and Ruby both make a show of looking sideways down the hall to Beth’s room before trundling into the kitchen. They’re only half-razzing her, stacking up lasagne in the fridge and boiling the kettle for coffee when Rio swaggers in, blissfully, thankfully, dressed. 

He arches an eyebrow when he sees them all. 

“Ladies,” he greets, pushing his wallet into the back pocket of his pants. His hand finds Beth’s lower back, the upper curve of her arse, grazing it lightly. “We’ll talk later. I got business.” 

Beth nods, clears her throat, watches the way his eyes flick to her lips, and for a second she thinks he’s going to kiss her there, then, in front of her sister, in front of Ruby, but then he’s out the door, and hopefully out of earshot by the time Annie starts screaming.

*

She spends most of the day lost in thought.

Ruby and Annie stay until just after lunch, interrogating her on almost every aspect of the night (Annie had slapped her hand on the very kitchen counter Rio had almost fucked her against, yelling “And don’t you skimp on the detail!”) and she mostly had. This whole thing with Rio, it still felt too new, too fragile to be too open with. She had told them how many times though, which had earned her two pairs of wide eyes, a cackle (from Annie) and a _making up for lost time, I see_ from Ruby. 

After they left, Beth revisited her to-do list and done a couple of small, easy jobs before forgoing it entirely, ducking back into her bedroom instead and being so overcome with the heavy smell of sex and Rio and _sex with Rio_ that she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to lie back down and fall into it all or clean everything up. In the end, she’d decided on the latter, opting to wash her sheets, her clothes, and being oddly overwhelmed when she’d found one of the little stringy bracelets Rio ties around his wrists still on her dresser, and right, Beth had thought then.

Time for scotch. 

So she’d poured herself one, and then another, and then decided on scotch in the bath – she hadn’t finished her shower that morning anyway, and her time in there hadn’t exactly done much to clean her up. 

She undresses, slipping into the water and letting her eyes close. It’s a little too hot – enough that she can feel her skin pinking brightly, but she rather likes the feel of it this afternoon, the steam opening her up and unwinding her all at once. 

She’s not sure how long she’s been in there when she hears a throat clear, her eyes snapping open to find Rio standing there, eyebrows raised, lips pulled into that wry little grin, shoulder pushed into the door frame. 

She can’t really help herself getting embarrassed, but she resists the urge, somehow, to slip further down into the water. The bubbles are already doing a pretty good job hiding her more intimate parts anyway, the pink skin exposed little more than a leg, a neck, and the starting line of her breasts. 

“Can I help you?” she asks, eyebrow arched, and Rio’s grin only widens. He laughs a little, something soft and quiet and just for her, and she tries to squash the way that flutters in her belly. 

“You already have, sweetheart,” he replies, eyeing her appreciatively. He pushes off the doorframe, she thinks first to come over, a familiar twinge in her stomach at the thought, but it’s only to drop his phone, wallet, his gun (and god, will she ever get used to that one?) to the shelf in the corner.

“How was dealing with it?” she asks carefully, and Rio groans, rubbing a little at his forehead. 

“Fine. Done for now, which is what matters. V runs her mouth almost as much as you though.” 

“You obviously have a type.” 

And that at least makes him snort in something close to a laugh. 

“You were meeting with her?” she tries again, and Rio rocks his head back and forth. 

“Not all day. I had some business to finish off with the fake cash, settle a few debts with old partners, but V and I had to talk about the upcoming auctions too. We’ve locked three in. She has a few ideas too, but she’ll tell you about those in the next few days, once we know we’re in the black. She wants to go big already, bigger, but we need to keep it lowkey for a while yet.”

He frowns, and Beth finds herself tracing the set of his shoulders, the lines of his face all the more closely again. He looks exhausted, she thinks, probably in no small part due to how little sleep they got the night before, but also in that sort of soul tired way that she recognises sometimes in Ruby, when she’s been buried under with Sara. 

Before she can think anything else of it, she says, “You can join me, if you want.” 

“I ain’t ever been much of a bath guy,” he replies, but he walks over anyway, sitting on the edge of the tub, looking down at her. 

“Maybe I can change your mind,” she says coyly, hands moving the water from below, making the suds ebb and flow across her body, revealing a pink nipple, the crease where her thigh meets her hip. He rewards her with a laugh, that soft one that goes straight to her chest, and then drops his hand beneath the water surface, trailing up the inside of her thigh, dampening the sleeve of his shirt.

“Yeah?” he asks, and Beth goes to answer, but shivers instead, shifting enough to spread her legs, just a little, beneath his touch. It’s all it takes for his fingers to find her cunt, to slip almost too easily inside. 

“Girl, you are somethin’ else,” he breathes, watching as her mouth falls open, his fingers making neat, easy work of fucking her, his thumb pushing up to pad roughly at her clit. 

She lets her neck roll sideways as she moves her own hand out of the water, reaching out to tug at his belt buckle. The movement makes him speed up, the water lurching around his arm, speeding around her thighs as his hand moves faster and faster and Beth’s hand falls aside to clutch at his thigh, just below his crotch, her eyes slipping shut, her chest heaving and then it’s all stars and lights.

It takes her a minute to catch her breath, to peel her eyes back open, and when she looks up, she almost frowns at the smug look on Rio’s face. She pushes at his belly, so much he almost falls off the edge of the tub, but then he pulls his fingers out of her (not without one last crook good enough to make her legs tremble) and stands up, shrugging out of his wet-sleeved shirt and kicking off his pants until he’s stark naked, his cock half-hard and bobbing as he moves. 

“Come on then,” he says, pulling her forwards enough that he can slide in behind her, his legs bracketing her hips and his cock pushed against the soft flesh of her ass. He pulls her towards him, so her back is flat against his chest, and reaches both hands around, one to cup at her breast, his thumb lightly caressing her skin, the other to curl between her fingers, and it’s the latter that makes her breath catch. The hand holding. 

“Don’t you want a hand?” Beth breathes out, rocking back against his cock so he gets the meaning and turning enough that she can see him, his head back, neck long, eyes closed. 

“It can wait,” he replies, and Beth blinks, a feeling she won’t acknowledge opening up in her chest, and no, Beth thinks then, it can’t. She lets go of his hand, and turns around on top of him, until she’s facing him, the water and bubbles pouring off her back, exposing her to the cold air of the bathroom until she buries down again, lying low on him as she presses her breasts down onto his half-hard cock. His head rolls forwards again, eyes peeling open to stare at her hotly as she captures his rapidly hardening dick between her full breasts. His hand lowers to her cheek and she tilts her mouth sideways to suck two of his fingers into her mouth.

He groans, loud, hoarse, as she slides her breasts down, squeezing them tightly, still sucking on his fingers, and she waits, until his eyes are fluttering shut again before she releases his fingers with a wet _pop_ , and says, “You know, we still haven’t talked about us.” 

He groans then for a whole different reason, eyes opening to look down at her. 

“You want to do that now?” 

With a wide, innocent grin, she nods, releasing his cock and sitting up on his lap, the water sloshing around them. She has to pull him forwards a little, so that her legs can go around him, but he lets her, even if he gives her a hard, pissed off stare as he does.

“So,” Beth says. “I think we’re dating now.” 

The look of surprise on his face might just have made her year. 

“It doesn’t have to be serious yet,” she continues. “To be honest, I’m not ready for you to meet my kids, and I don’t know if you’re ready for me to meet your family, but I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I don’t see a way around it. I’m not good at being really casual, and given your jealous outburst at the bar the other night after the job, I don’t think you are either.” 

She watches him, watching her, oddly pleased to have apparently stunned him into silence. 

“Am I wrong?” she asks, eyebrows raised, and he does that thing where he rocks his jaw back and forth, enough she can see it clench and unclench in the back. “I’ll take that as a no.” 

When he doesn’t disagree with her, she sighs, relaxing back a little against his legs. 

“It doesn’t have to be something, like you said this morning,” she says. “But I refuse to pretend that it’s nothing. I won’t do that. I don’t think I can. We’re not kids. We don’t have to call each other anything but our names, not boyfriend, not partner, not lover, and nobody else needs to know, but…but I need to know. About us. I need to know we’re together.” 

After she’s said it, the words hang in the air between them, thick between their chests, but Rio’s eyes don’t leave hers, and she thinks she knows him well enough now to know the moment that they soften.

“Okay,” he says finally, and Beth blinks, her lips twitching into a grin.

“Okay?” 

“Okay,” he repeats, and then she’s smiling, and he’s kissing her, soft at first, and then harder, passionately, surging forwards, the water sloshing out of the tub and crashing against her back, and Beth’s nails are digging into his shoulders and he’s pushing his legs up with Beth on them, lining his cock up and pulling Beth down until he’s balls deep inside her. She gasps at the motion of it, adjusting to the feeling, and then laughing, leaning over to suck a bruise into his neck, one that says _mine_ , and she curls her hands around his head so he can’t move away from it, but he doesn’t seem to mind, he just fucks her harder, and there’ll be water all over the floor if he keeps up this momentum, but Beth finds it hard to care. 

They’re together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They finally talked about it :'-) I think playful Beth and Rio are my favourites to write.
> 
> There's only one more 'big' chapter left, plus a little epilogue/coda. I started this just after Season 1 finished, and I'm hoping to have it done before Season 2 starts this weekend (!!!!) It's been such a fun piece to write, so I hope you all stay tuned and are ready to gush with me on tumblr about the new season. I am HYPED to say the least. 
> 
> Enjoy!


	11. Chapter 11

“I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard about everything that’s happening with Rembrandt,” the guy – Craig? Colin? – says, leaning across the bar towards her, and Beth just nods, crossing her legs as she takes a sip of her cocktail – something dry, and a little salty. Not usually her thing, but she thinks it fits this version of her, the one who might just live in this world. 

“It’s incredible,” Beth replies. “To find two new paintings of his, how many years after his death? But I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it? A painter can never truly know when their star is going to rise, or even if it ever will, so why on earth would he feel the need to log every painting he did to get by? Both of these new works were in the early days of his career, and likely commissions. A lot of qualified people think that the first one is a wedding portrait, torn in half, did you know that? It means that the picture of his wife is still to be discovered.” 

Craig/Colin practically buzzes before her, a desperate fizzle of misplaced flirtation and inherited privilege, and Beth wonders if it always could have been this easy. Easier, perhaps, were she a little younger, and a little easier herself. The bar is bright with energy, close to packed, but this auction is a silent one – a new one that V had yet to dip her toe into before tonight. She’d felt good about it though, and if Ruby grinning between two men on the other side of the bar is anything to go by, V’s feeling had been a good one. 

“Where’d you study?” Craig/Colin asks her, leaning in a little closer, until Beth can smell his cologne, the scotch on his breath, the briefest whiff of pungent, expensive cheese. 

“I didn’t actually,” Beth says, and the story she’d made up for this particular her uncurls in her head, easy as the rest of the lies she tells. “I learnt on the job. I started in a tiny gallery upstate and, well, I guess I had the touch.” 

She makes a point of leaning closer, touching the guy’s arm, and it’s then that she knows that she has him. 

She’s getting better at this. She knows she is – if nothing else, because V has gotten better at briefing her, and they’re starting to get to know the players. It’s only been a couple of weeks since the first job (and a couple of weeks since her and Rio - - _well_ ), but she’s finding it easier and easier to slip in and out of this costume, and to lock eyes with the men with the deepest pockets. Ruby works a slightly different game – preferring to work a few guys, softer flirting, where they know they don’t really have a chance (“It feels less like I’m betraying Stan that way,” she’d told Beth over drinks, her forehead creased and her eyes a little wet. She’d shook her head then, laughed, at herself, at the situation. “Plus it’s kinda fun keeping these rich boys on their toes.”).

Cyrus still doesn’t like them, but Beth doesn’t really care. Even now, she can feel his eyes on her across the venue, something souring in the distance, and so she tilts her head, lets this mark follow the line of her neck to her cleavage and dart back up again instead. 

“You know, there’s something to be said for self-made women,” the guy says, and Beth laughs, leaning in to knock against his shoulder. 

“Isn’t there just? I know my life is full of them.” 

She leans back a little in her seat, feeling her phone buzz in her purse, and she pulls it out to check it quickly – a message from V – _Close it. You’ve got him. R’s coming in._

And right, Beth thinks, making a show out of looking around, discreetly checking on Ruby, who’s still smiling, and then scanning the crowd for Rio. She can’t spot him, so instead pivots around on her barstool, looks at the paintings, and gasps softly. 

“Oh my god, look at me, forgetting I’m on the clock.” 

The guy just laughs, and V’s right, Beth knows. 

She’s totally got him. 

“Not at all,” he tells her, waving the bidding slip of paper in front of her. “I appreciate the time you’ve spent sitting with me. I hope your boss knows you’ve gotta be one of his best assets.”

He gives her an appreciative look at that, and even Beth can feel the sharkishness in her grin. 

“Oh, I’d love it if he heard that,” she says, slipping up off the stool. She makes a point to linger, just a second, to _just almost_ touch his arm again. “Hopefully I’ll see you again when I get to hand that piece over to you.” 

She thinks maybe it’s a little much, but she swears he blushes, just a little, just around his ears, making a production of whipping a pen out of the inside pocket of his blazer and scribbling a bid onto the slip of paper in his hands. He gets up himself, heading straight towards the forgery. 

“Hopefully you will,” he calls, and Beth smiles as she finishes her drink and scans the crowd for a new mark. She’s already guaranteed three big sales, but one more couldn’t hurt. It’s a loose crowd with big wallets and enough hard liquor flowing to lubricate a nun, so she’s fairly sure she can milk it, particularly in this dress – something with a floaty skirt, but a fitted waist, top, a neckline that doesn’t exactly plunge, but doesn’t exactly _not_ plunge either. It helps that it’s all springtime colours too – cream, with a blush pink, soft yellow, even softer green blossom print – she’d thought it’d make her look silly here when V had insisted, but she finds that the woman was, as usual, right, and that the softness of it only makes her stand out more vividly in the dark suit crowd. 

She looks out across the bar and promptly makes eye contact with an older guy, a little froggish in the face, but still relatively handsome, greying at the temples, who looks almost shyly away when he catches her gaze, and Beth can’t help but grin. V had briefed her on this one – an eight figure net worth who invests heavily in art and Silicon Valley apps. Money to burn, and well, if they’re not happy to help him burn it. She’s arranging the catalogue of their fake art to sell him in her head, and starts around towards him when a hand finds her lower back. 

“Let me buy you a drink,” the voice says, unmistakable in its drawl and its deepness, and Beth has to stop herself leaning back into his touch. She doesn’t even turn around to look at him. 

“I’m sorry, I’m working. Maybe another time.” 

“Come on,” he purrs, breath warm at the shell of her ear. “You’ve been workin’ hard. I’m sure your boss would understand.” 

Beth looks back then, and has to stop her breath from catching. She hadn’t had the chance to see him before the brief with V and the job starting, and she’s surprised to see him so scrubbed up – clean shaven, so as to look younger, in pressed black dress pants, a blazer, a black shirt buttoned to the collar. He looks _good_. 

He always looks good. 

Beth shifts her weight out from beneath his hand. 

“If you’re talking about my business partner, I’m not sure he would. He can be a little hotheaded.” 

And it’s enough to get him to arch an eyebrow, to get his jaw to rock, backwards, and then forwards. Beth resists the urge to grin as she waves down the bartender. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were self-employed.” 

“Well, I’ve always viewed myself as more of a gun for hire than an employee, you know? I mean, I’m sure the guy contracting my services currently would like to think otherwise, but,” she rolls her eyes a bit, clicks her tongue. “I’m my own agent. It’s just easier to let him think otherwise.” 

“Oh, is that right?” 

There’s a moment there when she thinks she might have gotten a genuine rise out of him, and almost preens at the realisation. It’s just that familiar thing – his jaw, rocking backwards and then forwards again, a tight grin pulling at his features. 

The bartender makes it over, and Beth orders a martini, letting Rio order for himself – a whiskey, neat. He takes a drink, while Beth eats her olive straight off the stick, hip pressed up against the bar. She watches him watch her mouth, and then his gaze flicks out across the bar. Beth follows it out to where it rests on Ruby, who just arches an eyebrow and widens her eyes in their general direction. 

“You know, you’ve done good tonight,” he says, still looking out at Ruby.

“I know,” Beth replies, taking a sip of her martini, and Rio’s hand finds her lower back again, tightening in the fabric of her dress. “I could keep doing good.” 

“You could,” he says, and he finally meets Beth’s gaze. 

And she’s used to this by now, isn’t she? The way he can undress her with so little focus, unravel her with so little effort. She’s already weak in the knees for him, and from the look on his face, he knows it, but damnit, if Beth’s not willing to give that up yet. Her eyes scan the crowd instead, lock in again on her guy as she pushes off the bar. 

“Thanks for the drink,” she says, polishing off the rest in a single down, dropping the glass to the counter and turning on her heel. She’s not even halfway towards the guy when she feels an arm snake powerfully around her waist, jerking her down a side hallway and push her up against the wall. 

It takes her a second to catch her breath, but she doesn’t let the movement break her stride. She just blinks up at Rio, who’s bracketing her – an arm either side of her face, his hips pushed against hers. 

“Oh, did you want something?” she asks innocently, and Rio rolls his eyes, but his mouth is curved into a smile when he presses it against her neck. 

“Anyone ever tell you you talk a lot of shit?” 

Beth breathes out a laugh as his lips find that tender spot, just above her collarbone. She curls into him, and then tries to correct herself. 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of an asshole?” 

His hands are up beneath her dress now, gripping her thighs, curling inwards, a finger just starting to play with the edge of lace on her panties. 

“Not many still breathin’.” 

He chooses that moment to hook a finger in her panties, tugging them down just enough that he can press the flat of his hand to the join of her, to rub broadly, then specifically, his thumb finding her clit, stroking it roughly. 

“Well, that kind of proves them right, doesn’t it?” she says, eyes up to the ceiling, her hands fumbling with his belt as he hikes her dress up, and then his pants are off, just enough, his cock instantly at her center, rubbing roughly outside before it slips in, and Rio’s sucking hickeys into her neck, her chest, thumb still at her clit, his cock thrusting up, and fuck, Beth thinks, letting her eyes slip shut. 

Fuck.

*

“You guys okay?” Annie says, swivelling in her desk chair, eyes darting knowingly between Beth and Rio. “I mean, you vanished there for a bit.”

“And traumatised a few waiters,” V adds dryly, still scrolling through her tablet and looking over the bids. 

Not for the first time in her life (or even, really, that day) Beth wishes she weren’t so pale – the blush finding her cheeks as easy as red ink on paper. Rio, to his credit (or not), doesn’t even react, just leans back against the wall of the hotel suite, checking something on his phone. 

“All the pieces sold,” V continues. “Good thing too, because if that last one fell through because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants for a night, we’d be having a very different conversation.” 

“Good thing,” Rio agrees, not even lifting his eyes from his phone, and Beth rolls her own, wanders over to sit down beside Annie on one of the spare chairs. They’d booked the hotel suite above the function room as a point room, Annie and V settling in to track the bids and keep watch, and even now, used to it, Beth can’t help but feel like she’s in the middle of a heist movie. Then again, she kind of is. 

The door creaks open again, and Ruby steps through, a wide grin on her face. 

“That was a _time_ ,” she says, dropping her purse to the hall table. “Those guys have no idea what’s hit them.” 

Beth laughs at that, unable to help herself, and it’s not long before they’re packed up and gearing up to leave. They walk out in groups – Rio first, who has business to see to elsewhere anyway – and then V, then Annie, Beth and Ruby, tugging on their coats to fight the cool night air. 

“Another day, another dollar,” Annie says, stretching her arms up over her head, and Beth just looks her over, a small grin playing at her lips. 

“A lot of dollars,” she agrees, and Annie and Ruby both grin. They’re almost at the taxi rank when Ruby starts to slow beside them, almost coming to a complete stop. 

“I’m kind of wired,” she says, shrugging up her shoulders. “Let’s grab a drink.” 

“Sorry, I’ve got to pick Sadie up in like, four hours,” Annie says. “Next time?” 

“I’m in,” Beth says, and so they pile Annie into a cab with a direct order to text when she gets home, and Beth and Ruby go for a walk.

*

So they find this tiny bar in a part of town hipper than either of them. Something nestled between a laundromat and a Thai restaurant, with a tall bar and a jukebox playing indie songs pushed into the corner, and they order bourbon instead of the pretend-them drinks, and they get a little spot by the window and the wall, to feel protected and to be able to see, which really, Beth wishes wasn’t a concern anymore.

“Stan is reinstating date night,” Ruby says. “And he wants to have a compulsory Honesty Hour during it, where we no-judgement-no-shame tell each other everything that’s happened that week.” 

Beth can’t help but laugh. 

“I mean, that’s probably the most Stan thing I have ever heard, and I’ve known him since you started dating him sixteen years ago.” 

Ruby just makes a _no shit_ face at her, and right, Beth thinks, probably not the point. 

“Are you going to tell him everything?” Beth asks, and Ruby shrugs. 

“Yeah, I am. I mean, when we talked about this the other night, I wasn’t sure. It kind of freaked me out, but then, you know, he already knows about the grocery store, he knows about the art stuff we’re doing now, I mean, sure, cliff notes, not detail, but still…We’ve already crossed that line, I guess, and things aren’t great, but they’re better now that he knows, and he’s stuck around.”

“He loves you,” Beth says, and Ruby gets misty eyed. 

“He really does,” she says, looking down at her drink. She clenches her eyes shut, wipes furiously at her eyes, and then back up at Beth. 

“I saw you and gangfriend sneak off too, so…” 

Beth blushes, but sits a little straighter. 

“So?”

“So Imma need details. Girl, Stan might love me, but he doesn’t pull me out of work functions to screw me in hallways anymore. We’re two kids deep, that is not where we’re at. Let me live vicariously for a hot sec.” 

Beth groans, dropping her head down so far it almost hits the table, and then leans back up. 

“I don’t understand when it ends. It’s been three weeks, and we’re still in the _tear each other’s clothes off_ phase. I can barely walk anymore.”

Ruby laughs, and reaches a hand over to pat Beth’s arm in commiseration. 

“And he’s _so good at it_ , it’s not fair. I mean, I know I don’t exactly have a long list to compare him too, but it doesn’t feel like everyone does sex like this.” 

“That’s because they don’t,” Ruby agrees. “Babe, you could bottle the heat between you two and sell it. Everyone in a room with you guys can feel it. I know. We all talk about it.” 

Beth groans again as Ruby makes a gesture at the bartender for another round. It’s quiet enough in here that Beth can almost let herself forget that they’re out at all – that they’re not at home, _Real Housewives_ on in the background, swapping secrets over cheap wine. But then, Ruby often has that effect on her. Something about the intimacy between them, and all the history too. Beth finishes her drink. 

“Don’t suppose you’re having honesty hours with him?” Ruby asks, breaking the quiet, and Beth looks up, considering her words. 

“Not exactly,” she decides on. “But we’re getting there.” 

Because they are. Because Rio’s never going to be the guy who sits down and monologues his history to her, but there are little things, dropped into conversation, that she collects like pearls to hoard in the drawers of her memory. He’ll mention something about how his eldest sister used to drive him crazy when Beth complains about Annie, or about the way his mother still tries to take care of him, when Beth’s folding the kids’ laundry, or how math was the only subject that made sense to him in school when Kenny fails his math quiz again (“I could help him,” Rio says, “If I met ‘em properly,” and Beth’s heart stutters in her chest.) 

The way he’ll hover around the kitchen when she cooks anything – literally, anything – dinner or cupcakes or instant mac and cheese, and asks her non-stop about what she’s doing (“Why that pan?” “Why four cups exactly?”) which she doesn’t understand until he tries to cook for her and almost burns her kitchen down. (“I’m just glad we found something you’re bad at,” she laughs, almost hysterically, and he growls at her, and maybe they do finally fuck on her kitchen table, on top of the breakfast dishes, ashen toast and rubbery eggs pushed away around them). 

“I don’t know what the future is,” she says. “I don’t think I mind that. I thought I would, but I don’t.” 

She’s surprised to find that she means it. 

“Is he someone I can grow old with? I don’t know. Does that matter? Right now, what we have feels…” she struggles, briefly, with the word, “Precious. I haven’t felt that since Dean and I had Kenny. And with Rio - - I don’t know. It’s good. I don’t know what the lifespan is, but I think I’m just going to enjoy it while it lasts.” 

Ruby just smiles at her, something soft and weighted with so much meaning that Beth thinks that she was wrong. That she feels the preciousness of this, right here, with Ruby too. The bartender drops off their drinks, and Ruby leans forwards, like she’d read Beth’s mind, holding up her glass.

“Not you and me though,” Ruby says. “Our lifespan is forever.” 

“Forever,” Beth agrees, smiling, and leaning over to cheers her.

*

She doesn’t make it home until almost dawn, and she’s surprised, as she slips in the back door, to find that Rio’s already there, peering through the leftovers in the fridge. He doesn’t even look up when she steps in, just pulls out another container, as if debating whether or not it’s the one that he wants.

“There’s that maple pork you liked in the back drawer,” she says, unbuttoning her coat and kicking off her pumps, and Rio purses his lips, hums a little as he pushes the other containers back and reaches for the pork instead. He pulls it open, sniffs it, and makes a happy sound in the back of his throat as he reaches for a plate. 

“When’s car man dropping off the kids?” 

“Tomorrow,” Beth says with a sigh, and Rio nods. It means he’ll go home for the week. She’s yet to see his place, and the knowledge of that weighs heavier on them than she cares to admit. He tells her there’s not much to see – even before her, he spent such little time there – it’s just an apartment, not a home, but still, she’d like to see it. 

For now though, she just leans back against the kitchen counter, watching him move through her kitchen with the sort of panther-like grace that should be illegal for someone microwaving leftovers at three in the morning. 

He’s out of his blazer now, but is otherwise still dressed from the bar, and it’s only then that she sees that one of his belt loops has torn a little with the force of which she pulled off his belt. She almost blushes again, but shakes her head to clear it. 

“You know you can’t do that again,” Beth says, folding her arms over her chest. “I think V might actually kill you next time. Besides, she’s not wrong. It’s not professional. I was working. ”

He arches an eyebrow at her, leaning to press back against the counter, the sound of the microwave whirring behind him. 

“We were both workin’.” 

Beth meets his raised eyebrow with one of her own. 

“That’s debatable.” 

He leans forwards then, folding his arms over his chest, mirroring her pose. She’s not sure if he even means to do it, but something tells her he does, that he likes this – this gentle teasing, this little, simmering, slip of an argument. 

“Oh, is it?” 

“I’m the one on the ground when we do these jobs, not you. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.” 

Rio makes a vague noise of agreement, nodding as he furrows his brow, lips pursed in faux seriousness. 

“You need to take that seriously,” she says, feeling herself start to get actually, properly annoyed. He must feel it too, the shift in her tone, and so his face relaxes slightly and he exhales, gesturing between the two of them. 

“You think if I didn’t take you seriously we’d even be here? I ain’t here to fuck around, Elizabeth.” 

“I know, but you’ve got to know how it looks, when you do that.”

“Do what?” he asks innocently, and Beth can see it, the heat at the back of his eyes at the memory of it, and God, she wishes it didn’t do the things it does to her. 

“Fuck me on the job,” she says, exasperated, and then he’s in front of her, closing the distance between them so quickly that Beth loses her breath. It’s unfair, she thinks, not for the first time that night, how he can do that. He looks down at her, taller than ever with her standing barefoot on the floor (she forgets the edge her pumps give her), so close that she can feel his body heat, his toes nearly touching her own. 

“I couldn’t help it, darlin’. Somethin’ about you in there, talkin’ like you talk, cashin’ those guys in, it’s impressive.” 

“Impressive?” she breathes, and he hums, hands snaking up the back of her dress, fingers just skimming the backs of her thighs. 

“You impress me,” he says, and Beth can feel her eyes slipping shut, his lips hovering, just gently above her own and then - - the microwave beeps behind them, and he’s off her, beelining over and pulling out the pork. He rubs his hands together, makes a pleased noise in the back of his throat, and Beth blinks hard. 

“You’re an asshole,” she says once she’s caught her breath again, and he looks over at her innocently, his eyebrows raised in that _who, me?_ expression he does too well. He plates it up, pulls a fork from the drawer and takes a bite. He purses his lips, nods, hums, pleased. 

“What do you put in this?” he asks, waving his fork down at it. 

“You know what I put in it,” she says, leaning back into the counter. “You wouldn’t get out of the kitchen while I was cooking it.” 

He wouldn’t get off her either. She’d spent the whole time glazing it with him pressed against her back, his hands around her waist, murmuring questions about cook times and ingredients into the crook of her neck. 

Now though, he just shrugs. 

“I like hearing you talk about food.” 

“You like food,” she says, and he grins, shrugs again, and lifts his arm up at the elbow, tilting his head, and it’s easier than it should be, to slip in below his arm, pressing her chest to his side as he eats above her. It was a surprise, this part, how open with his affection he can be, how much he seems to be ruled by the need to touch her, hold her, stroke her face. Before all of this, she’d thought it would be just sex for him, that every bit of intimacy flung at her would be a step on the pathway to bed (like Dean, she thinks, not without a little bitterness), but Rio seems satisfied often just by this – by her, pressed against him. 

“I only did it because we’d hit target, and I wasn’t lying when I said you impress me,” he says above her. “But you’re right. I ain’t got the right to you in there, not when you’re workin’. I won’t do it again.” 

“Thank you,” she says, and he grips her at the base of her neck a little, somehow both firm and soft at the same time.

“Unless you want me to.” 

She shoves him then, and he laughs, leaning down to kiss her, and hey, she thinks, grabbing the plate from his hands and pushing it away (ignoring his noise of faux outrage) before curling her arms around his neck, maybe sometimes she will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I know I said that there'd be one more big chapter and a coda, but I ended up including the coda here instead, so it's done. Thank you so, so much for all your amazing reviews and support and for being on this wild journey of a fic with me (lol, remember when I thought it was going to be a tiny thing and now it's basically novel-length?) It's been such a fun piece to write, and I probably wouldn't have come back to it after I left it a few months it if it wasn't for all your kind words.
> 
> I've loved it so much I might have a couple of one-shot sequels in the works, but those are a little ways away, haha. 
> 
> Also Season 2 starts tonight!! I am HYPED!

**Author's Note:**

> I actually started this fic after 1x09 (I totally predicted the Dean car-accident / Beth finding out that way after the ep teaser!) and am now in the process of working out how the mass amount of writing I did can be massaged into 1x10's canon, but hey, I'm here for it. This'll probably be five parts, and will be 80% head canon's, particularly regarding Beth and Rio's respective pasts, but hey, I hope you like it. :-)


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